March 25, 2007. The Ossuary.
The Head opened a door that led downward.
The stairs carved themselves into stone that predated the building above, predated maybe several buildings before it, it looked like the stone had been carved once and had simply been re-surrounded by newer structures as centuries passed. The torch-holders on the walls were iron, dark with age, the flames burning in that color I still didn't have a name for.
The chamber at the bottom was enormous.
Lanterns floated, I don't mean hung, literally floated, drifting in slow rotation above our heads, the rows of graves embedded in the chamber walls like shelves in a library. Hundreds of them. Each one set into a carved alcove, each one marked, labeled, catalogued.
"Welcome to the ossuary," said Miu, beside me.
"Arata called it a dojo," I said.
"He would," she said.
"And you call it?"
"The correct word," she said.
From the center of the room, Arata spread his arms. "The Benikaen isn't just a sanctuary," he announced, "it is the heart of the clan's operation. Graves here have been brought from cemeteries across the country, uprooted from forgotten sites, from locations compromised by development or raider activity, and relocated here where they can be protected and maintained."
He lowered his arms.
"And where you can train with them," he said. "The graves here are connected to the Benikaen's spiritual network. Meaning a binder who's grave is here or has formed a connection with a grave in this place can call upon that grave anywhere in the world. Portable and stable. As strong as the connection allows."
Arata, leaning lazily against a stone pillar, said to us. "You three up for a little exercise?" He pointed at us, grin stretched thin.
Between the rows of alcoves, shapes began separating themselves from the walls.
From the spaces between them, the dark parts, the parts the floating lanterns didn't quite reach. Shapes that accumulated detail as they moved into the light: shapes with the rough outline of human forms.
Spirits.
"Consider this exposure therapy." Arata said cheerfully, from somewhere behind us.
Three of them. One for each of us.
---
Genkei moved first.
His movement was simple. His hand closed around the scabbard. His posture shifted by less than an inch.
His blade didn't appear so much as arrive, already in motion.
The spirit in front of him convulsed. A thin red line crossed its chest, precise as a paper cut. It dissolved into light, each mote gone before it reached the floor.
Genkei's blade returned to its sheath with a click.
He exhaled once.
That was it.
I stared at the place where the spirit had been.
"Show-off," Saiko said. She was already moving.
From her palms, something poured, gray, fine, catching the light making the air look like it had texture. Ash. Her ash expanded across the floor in the time it took me to blink, surrounding the spirit that had been approaching her with a circle that contracted.
She snapped her fingers.
The ash detonated.
The sound it made was a fwoosh rather than a bang. The spirit shrieked in a frequency I felt in my back teeth rather than heard properly. When the ash settled back into her hands, coalescing, drawn back like it had somewhere to be, the spirit was gone.
Saiko caught the coin she'd been flipping at some point, grinning. "My grave, Takigawa Katsurō. General of Ashes. He burned everything including himself, which honestly sounds like philosophy more than a death cause."
"Dedicated to the cause I guess," I muttered.
"I admire it." She winked. "I'm telling you now because I'm not gonna be all mysterious and edgy about it. Everything I touch turns to ash and the ash does what I want. Smother, burn, explode, reshape, ignite. Pretty self-explanatory."
Genkei's mouth moved, which was the closest he came to a reaction.
Meanwhile.
My spirit lunged.
I moved. Not well. My body had some instincts and my body deployed them, which barely got me out of the first swipe's range. My blood was rushing, the ember of Kenji Eito's power sparked behind my sternum, I reached for it, pulled, felt it respond…
It guttered.
I lashed out, fist connecting with its jaw, but it barely flinched. The ember sparked, lighting my knuckles, but it sputtered.
Saiko tilted her head, pouting. "You're struggling, huh?"
"I—shut up—!" I ducked under a swipe, feeling the air rip across my back.
Arata's voice cut through the chaos.
"Scraps," Arata said, from his perch on a convenient tombstone. "That's what you're working with. The grave's broken, the contract's dissolved, you got the equivalent of a handful of change out of a full wallet before the wallet closed."
The spirit screeched and came at me again.
I ducked. Rolled. Came up leading with an elbow with my left arm to it's chin, then a right hook. My punch cracked through the spirit's head. scattering it into light, but the effort left me gasping.
I straightened up.
Genkei was watching me with his arms folded and his expression I couldn't read.
Saiko pointed at me. "Not bad, rookie. Ugly and desperate, but completed the objective."
"You're very encouraging," I said between breaths.
The Head stepped forward. "This is the distinction between carrying a grave and existing on its remnants. What you felt tonight, that ember, is temporary. It will be gone by morning. Without a true binding, you are fighting with a dying lantern in heavy rain."
"But," Arata added, tilting back on the tombstone. "A dying lantern still produces light. And sometimes desperate kids survive the longest."
---
I raised my hand. I had a question.
Everyone looked at me.
"Why," I said, pointing at Miu, "is she not being thrown at angry spirits like a chew toy while the rest of us are getting our faces rearranged?"
"Just you," Saiko whispered.
Miu adjusted her glasses.
"Because she's different," Arata said. "Different system, different skill tree, different everything."
"Onmyōji tradition," the Head said, "has never been about gravebinding. We speak to spirits, we release them, we maintain balance. The binding of a spirit to oneself is an exception, a choice that is a burden. Our arts do not require that burden."
"So she gets a pass," I said.
"She gets a different test," Miu said. Her voice was neutral, which made it more pointed than if she'd been annoyed. "If you fight to survive. I survive without fighting. One path is a chain. The other is a thread. Both cross the same distance. Only one leaves scars."
I looked at her.
"Are you saying you do more by doing less?" I said.
"I'm saying the wall you broke your nose on?" She tilted her head. "I convinced it to be a door."
Arata snorted.
I rubbed my nose involuntarily.
"Sometimes," she added, and her voice went slightly softer, "the wall really wants to stay a wall. And I get bruises too." She paused. "We still have to keep trying."
I didn't have a response to that.
I filed it, along with several other things from tonight under process later.