Age of Darkness (8 page)

“Gah!” the white-haired man grunted
suddenly, staggering backward, and Yata fell to the ground. There was a bruise
on the side of the white-haired man’s face from a heavy blow. He raised an
eyebrow, turning toward Yata with a snarl. “You annoying bastard….”

Yata’s skin had transformed from its flesh
into a shining metal that reflected the moon’s light. He glanced at his own
body and blinked a few times in disbelief. “What is going on?” he muttered,
clenching his fists and chuckling lightly. “I don’t know what this is, but I
like it.”

He leapt forward and swung his fist into
the white-haired man’s face. “Kei! Get Aika and head after that other guy! He’s
going to go and assassinate the elders. I think the meteor did something to us,
but there’s no time to figure it out! You need to head there and stop that guy
right now! Otherwise, everyone in Bakaara is dead; you hear me? I’ll hold this
old man off!”

The white-haired man worked his jaw,
cracking his neck to the side with a broad grin. He swung his fist, conjuring a
burst of concentrated wind that swept forward and slammed into Yata. The wind
shook the apple tree to its core, and the leaves began to fall off into the
air. Keimaro braced his arms in front of him as the wind struck him like a
cannon, blowing his hair back and flapping his shirt everywhere. He grunted,
closing his eyes to protect himself from the wind.

When the wind calmed, Keimaro opened his
eyes and stared at the two super-humans fighting like gods, obliterating the
earth with their supernatural powers. It seemed that Yata’s newly developed
powers were rather easy to control, consisting of nothing but punching.
However, the white-haired man was using advanced techniques that involved
controlling the wind from different angles and concentrating the amount of
pressure that he used with each blow. The attacks didn’t seem to be doing
substantial damage to Yata because of his metal-like body, but Keimaro could
tell that this man had gotten his powers the same way Yata had—from some alien
source.

But, since Yata had obtained new powers,
did that mean that Keimaro and Aika had gained some from the blast as well? It
was quite possible. But when would he be able to use them? And would the powers
be the same as Yata’s or different? This was his wish coming true: a foreign
power was now sweeping over him and would grant him his ability to become
strong. Was he supposed to be happy at this moment? Happy that he had now
achieved power? Or should he be sad that a rogue was entering the ward with the
intention of bringing it down, thus killing everyone Keimaro had ever known?

Keimaro reached down and picked up Aika
like he would an innocent child. He glanced toward the two men fighting and saw
their battle raging with Yata constantly swinging his fists and the
white-haired man throwing his harmless gusts of wind at the metal boy. The
battle was stagnant, but Yata had purposely drawn the man away so that Keimaro
would have a clear path. He needed to get Aika to safety and then head after
Tobimaru. Hopefully the guards in the social district would be able to hold
Tobimaru off until he got there.

Tobimaru walked through the calm village of
Bakaara during the silent night. This was the easiest job he’d had in a while;
he had entered the village without any resistance. He didn’t have anything to
gain from destroying the village, but he was eager to see how the young
boy from the Hayashi clan would do in combat. In fact, that one attack earlier
had shown Tobimaru that the boy was filled with rage. Listening to the tone of
his voice and the strength of his battle cry, Tobimaru understood that the
young boy was filled with hate, anger, resentment, and sorrow. That boy
probably understood solitude more than anyone else. That was the destiny of the
Hayashi clan’s survivors after the massacre.

Tobimaru continued through the city,
absorbing his surroundings. He could feel the auras of many different humans in
the area, but only five elders were capable of holding up such a ward. He
scoffed in disappointment when he located them, finding that they were hiding
in plain sight. Such insolence came from the humans who hid behind the barrier,
thinking that it would always be there to protect them. It was a foolish to
believe one would always be safe behind a shield. Without fail, someone eventually
would be strong enough to break through.

By this point, the elders had probably sensed
his aura and alerted the guards, but Tobimaru knew that Bakaara had been hiding
behind its barrier for many years already. Its warriors hardly had any combat experience—if
there were any true warriors at all. Most of the soldiers in Bakaara likely
enlisted as a guard or a soldier to reap the benefits rather than actually
serve and put their lives on the line. They, too, believed that the ward would
always protect them.

As Tobimaru reached the large building that
hid the elders, he saw about thirty or so guards outside the doorway with their
steel weapons bathed in the moonlight, pointing at Tobimaru. To him, they
looked like a bunch of little boys holding pointy sticks that they found in the
woods and decided to use as weapons. It was pathetic and almost hysterical to
Tobimaru. His sword was sheathed across his back, and he slowly reached up over
his shoulder and gripped the hilt. He slid the blade from its sheath, the metal
scraping silently against the holder. As he whipped the long katana about, his
eye color morphed from its original dark color into a glowing demonic red,
which instilled fear in all of the guards.

“Don’t tell me … it’s a member of the
Hayashi clan!” one of the guards gasped.

Tobimaru sprinted forward. In a flash of
steel, Tobimaru cut down the men one by one, relentlessly severing their lives
from their bodies, leaving their corpses deformed by the time he was done with
them. One by one, they dropped at his feet, forming pools of crimson blood around
his leather boots. He continued onward, stepping over their lifeless bodies as
if nothing had happened, his soul filled with apathy.

Tobimaru threw open the door to the silent
building. He saw the five elders huddling together, wielding nothing but their
canes made of the wood of an old yew tree. They were covered in their red capes
and hoods, their faces hidden and their eyes downcast as they accepted their
fate. He twirled his sword with a sigh in the direction of the elders. The
entire building was completely empty other than the old men—without even a
piece of furniture.

“What do you intend to do once the ward is
gone?” one of the elders demanded, raising his head to look Tobimaru in the
eye. “Will you give mercy to the civilians or simply massacre the peaceful
people that have lived here for centuries?”

Tobimaru pulled back his hood, revealing
his spiky black hair and young face. He raised his eyebrow as he looked over
all of the elders, who saw his resemblance almost immediately. He looked almost
exactly like the Hayashi clan boy they had been hiding.

“One thing that you should understand about
me,” he said with little emotion, his eyes filled with resentment. “I know what
you elders have done to the Hayashi clan. I also know that members of this
community contributed to the Hayashi clan massacre, which is why there is a
young boy still surviving here. His parents were killed, weren’t they?” he said,
tightening his grip on the hilt of his sword. “As he is one of us, I hereby condemn
your entire village to death and complete eradication.”

“What? You can’t just—”

Tobimaru’s mouth spread into a wicked smile
that stretched across his face, his eyes glowing red with pure malice. “Oh, but
I can. The Faar army has been waiting to take over this piece of land for quite
some time. Its natural resources are phenomenal. It’s been enough to support
this whole village for centuries without any need to step outside to trade with
others. They will sweep in and murder everyone in this village. There is simply
no hope for you anymore.” He whipped his blade downward upon the elders, splaying
their ancient blood across the walls. “There is no hope at all.”

***

Keimaro panted heavily as he stumbled
through Yata’s house and gently placed Aika down on a bed, his heart pounding
rapidly. By now, that Tobimaru guy had probably already located the elders if
he had the same magical capability as his white-haired friend. However, on the
way to Yata’s house, he hadn’t seen any destruction. Perhaps Tobimaru hadn’t gotten
through the barrier after all.

Then a scream split the dead silence.
Keimaro’s eyes widened, and he raced to the window. He could
see
the
barrier. It was a purple force field that formed a massive dome around the
entire village. But as he watched, he could see that it was slowly melting
away. The assassinations had already followed through and been successful. How
was it possible to bypass all of the guards in such a small amount of time?

Keimaro squeezed the hilt of his metal bat,
hearing the thundering roar of soldiers in the distance. He saw what seemed
like hundreds—and maybe even thousands—of soldiers, racing toward the village
across the lush green plains that surrounded Bakaara. That was the Faar army
that Tobimaru had been talking about earlier. His bat rattled in his hand,
stirred by his spasm of fear.

We’re all going to die.
That was his first thought. Then he thought about his father and
mother and Mai. He couldn’t just let them perish. But, leaving Aika here
probably wasn’t the smartest idea either. “Damn…,” he swore, throwing the door
of Yata’s house open as he raced outside. He needed to check on his family and
bring them to Yata’s house. That way he could try to defend everyone in one
place.

Fear filled his heart at the very thought
of his family’s fate. As he ran in the direction of the marketplace, he could
see fire engulfing the village as people ran about, screaming in absolute
terror. He kept his distance from the actual marketplace but could see people
being brutally slaughtered by axes, swords, and arrows from the Faar army. The
villagers were being mercilessly killed. What madness was this that the
officers would order their soldiers to unleash their fury upon innocent and
unarmed people? Flames roared in the air as they engulfed buildings, swallowing
them in a cloud of ash. He had seen these buildings every day of his life, and
it was shocking to watch them burn down.

Keimaro ran around the marketplace to avoid
any soldiers. Hopefully they would spend their time looting before they decided
to head over to the farms, where his family lived. He sprinted forward, his heart
pounding when he finally saw the dirt roads that led to the farms. They were
filled with bodies—people who had been running for their lives and were
brutally slaughtered and slashed to the dirt. The earth drank up their blood,
leaving only stains in the ground. His heart was still beating rapidly as he
slowly walked forward, stepping over the bodies of some that he recognized from
school. Young girls and boys had been killed. Their parents were piled upon
them, trying to shield them from the sharp weapons of the Faar soldiers. He
stumbled forward and felt sick, his stomach giving out. He vomited onto the
ground, gasping. This could mean only that the Faar soldiers had actually
struck the farms first before the marketplace.

Keimaro blinked and began to run home, his
breath heavy as he dashed. The wind blew through his black hair as he leapt
over the corpses in the road. They had to be okay. They just had to be! When he
got home, everything would be just like the way he had left it.

But it wasn’t. In the distance, he could
see his house blazing in bright flames with several men standing outside,
watching it burn. They were Faar soldiers, wearing large white tabards emblazoned
with a red cross. They wore their tabards over their iron armor and held their
brandished swords into the air, calling out victory as if they had just slain a
majestic dragon.

Fire. His house was on fire. His next
actions turned him into a beast, but he did it nevertheless. His hands squeezed
the metal bat with incredible force, turning his knuckles white as his eyes
glowed a frightening red. He raced forward and yelled as one of the soldiers
turned around at the sound of his presence. He swung the bat with incredible
force, connecting it with the jaw of the first soldier. With a sickening crack,
the man’s entire jaw shattered and blood spurted from every possible opening in
his face.

That was not enough to clear Keimaro of his
anger. He brought the bat downward as the man fell to the ground. He smashed
the defenseless man’s weak skull with relentless force, killing him instantly.
Time seemed to slow as he looked into the eyes of the newly deformed man, and
his throat tightened, quite sickened at what he had done. The eyes of the man
were staring upward and fixed at Keimaro, but they stared straight through him
rather than at him. Blood was stained across his deformed face, leaving him
unrecognizable. This man was dead. Keimaro had taken someone’s life. He was
just as ruthless as these soldiers.

Keimaro could hear a roar around him and watched
as the remaining three soldiers raced at him from all directions. They had
fighting experience, sword training; they had everything. What chance did he
have? He whipped the bat and swung it, releasing the handle. The bat spiraled,
spinning openly through the air, and connected solidly with one man’s throat,
sending him falling to the ground with a gasp. Keimaro grabbed the sword of the
first man he had killed and slipped the blade from its sheath, watching the
gleaming steel enter the air. It was rather heavy, much heavier than the bat,
but he knew for a fact that it was much more deadly.

He turned around and saw one of the
soldiers swinging his sword at him. What was he supposed to do? He had read stories
about warriors who battled with others. The proper thing to do would to be to
dodge in order to avoid pain, but one could parry the sword if one had to, in
order to survive. He didn’t have much time to react, so he raised his sword in
a clumsy position and their blades slammed against one another. Keimaro almost
lost his grip on his sword, stumbling backward as the man’s blow overpowered
him completely. He nearly lost his balance, but the man pressed forward,
raising his sword to bring it slashing downward.

Keimaro’s eyes locked onto the exact movements
of the man, and he sidestepped, allowing the blade to come down and smash into
the dirt rather than his unprotected flesh. History said that warriors would
slash and aim for the throat, unprotected by armor. Keimaro gripped the hilt
with both hands and whipped the blade upward, slicing across the man’s throat.
The outcome was gruesome and almost too much for Keimaro to even look at. Blood
spurted into the air as mere droplets at first and then poured out like a
fountain as the man’s face paled as if he were a ghost. The man choked and
gasped for a moment. Then he fell to his knees with his head moving slightly as
if he were confused and shocked at what had just happened. Finally he collapsed
to the ground, his face smacking against the earth, unmoving.

Keimaro stared at the bodies of the two men
he had just killed and saw a third man already swinging at him. That was when
another figure leapt outward and swiped his sword in an advanced and fluent
motion, whipping it upward and slashing it across the soldier’s arm. Keimaro’s
eyes turned and looked to see that it was his father, slashing the man’s arm
and then spinning his own sword to cut the man down with a flowing downward
blow. The advanced sword style was beyond anything that Keimaro had ever seen,
not that he was particularly keen when it came to sword fighting. However, his
father’s sword style seemed to involve releasing the weapon in the middle of
combat and then catching it to confuse the enemy about where the next blow
would come from. This process also would speed up attacks.

His father twirled the blade and raced at
the final soldier, who had been hit in the throat by Keimaro’s bat. He spun his
entire body and used the momentum to bring the downward slash across the man’s
chest, leaving the man on the ground bleeding. His father slowly straightened
his back and stood tall. In the moment of silence, Keimaro and his father
listened to the sound of the burning fire.

Keimaro stood there for a moment longer
before growing sick at the fact that he had just killed someone. He coughed,
about to retch once more, when his father came over and patted his back gently.

There was no response.

Keimaro turned to his father, who finally
turned away from the bodies and looked extremely pale as if all of the life had
been sucked straight out of him. He looked almost exactly like the men who had
fallen on this day.

“Dad, where are Mom and Mai?” Keimaro
asked. When there was no response, Keimaro dropped his sword and grasped his
father’s shoulders tightly, giving him a shake. “Tell me, where the hell are
they?” he demanded, his voice rising to a yell.

“Go around the house and have a look for
yourself,” his father said quietly, his voice shaky and his lip quivering as he
dropped his sword to the ground, staring straight past Keimaro, completely lost
in his own thoughts.

Keimaro could tell from the look in his father’s
eyes that something had happened. He knew the fate of his family members before
he went around the house to look, but denial kept him from breaking into tears
before he actually saw the sight for himself.

As he walked around the burning home that
he had lived in for so many years, he locked his eyes onto his mother, who had
been completely skewered with a sharp sword. She was lying there on the ground
with her eyes fixed onto the dark night sky. Keimaro’s heart pounded. In that single
moment, the world stopped. It was just him and her body—the body of the one
person who had cared about him throughout the many years that they were
together, now lying dead before his eyes. Her innocent, pure blood pooled
around her unmoving corpse, and her pale skin looked the color of snow.

Like a soldier stabbed in battle, Keimaro
fell to his knees as tears began to form in his eyes. Then he cried like he had
never cried before, tears streaking down his cheeks and his wails splitting the
dead silence of the night. At the moment, he felt like everything was just
over. Everything. He heard footsteps behind him and bit his lip, tasting the
saltiness of his own tears. “Who did this?” he snarled to his father.

“The same man who took Mai. An acquaintance
of yours,” his father said. “You know the truth about your heritage now, don’t
you?”

Keimaro nodded and slowly stood up, wiping
his eyes with the back of his sleeve. He was drained completely of tears and
emptied of all happiness and hope. Someone took Mai. An acquaintance? Could it
have been that cloaked man named Tobimaru? Keimaro didn’t recognize the man by name,
but he could recognize the eyes. Was it possible that…?

“Ah! Keimaro Hayashi!” a voice exclaimed. A
man with a black cloak thrown over his body appeared miraculously at the foot
of Keimaro’s mother’s corpse. His hood was pushed back, revealing a wide smile
on his face. The figure was completely bald with a rather interesting purple
diamond tattoo located on his forehead just above his brow. He looked to be in his
forties, and his expression had absolutely no trace of negativity. He held his
hands outward as if giving an imaginary hug to the air. “Oh, what a world it is
that we live in!” he said, inhaling a deep breath as he smiled wickedly at
Keimaro. “Do you smell that? The burning of your village has a rather unique
scent to it. Could it be that it is because you are using natural resources
that are different from what I’m used to? The smell is unique. Or is that
simply the smell of burning filth? Oh, well! No point in asking. The question
is, young boy, do you know why we are here today?”

Keimaro heard a thump and glanced over his
shoulder to see that his father had been knocked unconscious. His heart skipped
a beat as he saw his father collapse to the ground. He spotted a shadow looming
over his father’s unmoving body and glanced up to find another cloaked figure,
whom he recognized immediately—Tobimaru. Meanwhile, the bald man was walking in
his direction. Keimaro wanted to go to his father, but he knew that he was
trapped between these two cloaked men who seemed to be somewhat associated with
each other. They didn’t wear the same tabards as the rest of the Faar soldiers.
Who were they?

“You’re here for the princess, aren’t you?”
Keimaro questioned, though he knew that it couldn’t be the only reason. It must’ve
been the meteor, if anything. But why were they massacring the villagers and
obliterating everything in sight? None of it made sense. “Who are you?”

“My name is Junko,” the man said with a
broad smile as he knelt down and brought himself face to face with Keimaro. “I
am a member of the Bounts. As a Bount, I am able to use magic. In fact, we are
currently some of the strongest humans that are known to walk upon this very
earth. You’re so very lucky to be in the presence of two of us right now.
Though, I wouldn’t expect you to know of us. After all, you’ve been trapped in
this bubble for quite some time now, haven’t you?”

Keimaro looked past Junko and at the corpse
of his mother, his fists shaking at his side with unbelievable rage. “And what
is your purpose for being here? To destroy my life?”

“No.” Junko grinned. “So that you will
become one of us.”

“What?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Junko exclaimed,
standing up tall and putting his hands on his hips as he examined the chaos in
the distance. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and sighed. “You are
living in a city that confines your potential. You’ve hidden from the world for
long enough. The Faar Empire has come in its own personal conquest to conquer
the land, take back their princess, and kill you. It’s time to make a choice.
Die by their hand or join us.”