The Yamata no Orochi.
Ujitake had not heard that name spoken aloud in a very long time, and hearing it now, in this small room, attached to the unconscious man lying on his bed — it sat wrongly in the air. Like something that had no business being here, in this era, in any conversation between living people.
Because the Yamata no Orochi was not simply dangerous. It was mythical. The kind of creature that existed at the far edge of recorded history, where fact and legend had long since stopped distinguishing themselves from each other. Eight heads. Eight tails. A body so vast the stories claimed it could blot out a hillside. It was said that Susanoo himself — a God, not a man, not a Demigod, a God — had needed every measure of his divine power to bring the creature down, and that the battle had shaken the land that would eventually become Kastoria down to its roots.
That had been thousands of years ago.
And the body had never been found.
