Ayame tried to get away. She had only one hand now, the other a bleeding stump that left a trail of red behind her as she scrambled across the floor. Her vision was filled with blood, her own blood, so much of it she could not tell where her body ended and the floor began.
She turned just in time. The clan elder took a big step toward her. She raised her remaining hand in a futile gesture of defense.
"Where are you going," he said, "after killing two of my trusted people? You try to run?"
He took her hand. The only remaining hand.
"You broke the code. The way you fight."
With the last of her strength, she tried to pull away. The elder, in his full muscular form, grabbed her forearm and began to tighten his grip. He tightened it with such force that veins became visible through his hands. She struggled. Her other side was bleeding and severed beyond recognition. She started to kick, to thrash, to do anything that might loosen his hold.
It did nothing.
"You hit from behind without declaring anything," he said. " You are a disgrace to the Gensai's lineage."
"A disgrace to The Red Lotus Clan."
With that, a sickening snap, so audible it seemed to echo off the walls.
Ayame screamed a heartful cry. A plea.
The elder yanked her arm upward and threw her into a nearby low wooden table. She hit it with such force that it made her fall to the ground. Blood splattered beneath her, pooling on the floor, soaking into the wood.
She was a bloody mess. Her body was barely recognizable as something that had once been whole. Arms missing. Wounds everywhere. Blood everywhere.
The moon was up.
She slowly turned lying on the ground of debris facing her opponent. Just past the tall, demonic, muscular figure, she saw Sellenia and Morwen shining in their own respective glows. They were beautiful. They were divine.
But it was almost midnight.
She could not think straight. Her thoughts were scattered across the floor like the fragments of her broken body. But she knew with quiet certainty that it could not become midnight. She could not let the night pass, or else the rift would close and claim her soul. They wanted her to carry blood sacrifices in the name of the twin moons.
They were right.
It was something she had to do since birth.
She twisted, lying down in a heap of wooden planks. She did not look at the approaching doom coming toward her. Instead, she looked at something else.
She focused on the round circular forms. The twin moons.
Something ugly, disgusting, treacherous but opposite of it is also a pure beautiful divine, presence.
She closed her eyes.
There was a heartbeat, something thrummed inside of her heart. Her body began to intensely solidify, building muscle matter, expanding her limbs in size. Her heart started to beat twice, no three times, its usual rate. She felt a surge of energy that pushed past the pain, past the fear, past everything that was telling her to lie down and die.
It was Morwen.
She opened her eyes.
The man had leapt off the ground.
But it was slow. So slow. Like watching threads branch off in different patterns. Ambient threads. Residue threads in the room. But more importantly, other strings also attached to the man in the room, wrapped around his ankle, his arms, his head. Like he was swimming through a pool of threads reacting to his mass.
It was Sellenia.
She did not know why, but she knew it like a fact she had always known. Ever since. Ever since she could remember.
With no hesitation, she twisted.
Everything resumed its normal speed. She saw the threads. White. Translucent. The threads attached to the man like he was dancing along those strings, like some kind of puppet whose strings were pulled by an invisible hand.
She seized the opportunity in that instant.
She could not weave another blood blade. Her right arm was useless, hanging from her shoulder by threads of muscle and sinew. Her left arm was completely torn from her body.
She wove a long blade that had no hilt but was still sharp and deadly, a sliver of crimson that extended from her mouth like a third arm. She threw her head forward, bringing it down with such force, and dashed toward the elder's trajectory.
He reacted. His hand shot out toward the empty air, trying to stop something that was no longer there.
But by then, it was already too late.
Ayame leapt behind him, her blade held in her mouth, as the man reached toward the empty air to stop something that had already passed.
His head fell to the floor. It hit the wooden boards with a wet thud, rolled once, twice, then stopped.
His body followed a moment later. The impact shook the room.
Ayame walked close to the body. She glanced down at her mangled, bloody form. So much damage. So much blood loss. So much of herself scattered across the floor of this chamber.
She briefly looked down at her hand.
And focused.
She willed her hand. Her right hand. Muscles flared. Veins pulsed. Bone structure reshifted itself back into place, grinding and scraping with a sound that made her teeth ache. Discomfort crossed her face for a moment, a brief flicker of pain that she quickly suppressed.
Her hand was more or less functionable. The bones realigned. The blood flowed back into places where it had been absent. but her tendons were torn. and muscle was missing.
She manifested another blood blade and held it. She was actively using her tendons and muscles to shift and grind her sheer bones back into place. Every movement hurt. Every breath hurt. Even thinking hurt.
But she stepped outside the council room.
Her kin. Her people. Her clan.
They surrounded the place, their eyes wide, their weapons drawn, their faces a mixture of horror and awe. They had heard the screams. The crashes. The sounds of battle that should have been impossible for someone like her to survive.
She stood before them, missing an arm, covered in blood, barely able to remain upright.
Her eyes found theirs.
And for a brief moment something akin to sorrow might have crossed the indifferent faced Oni.
People. Her kin surrounded the place. They stared at her. At the blood covering her body. At the blade in her hand. At the carnage she had left behind.
"The elders are dead," someone whispered.
"She killed him."
"She killed all three of them."
She stood there. Breathing hard. Blood dripping from her wounds. From her mouth. From everywhere.
No one moved. No one spoke. Everyone stared.
She turned and began moving toward the edge of the settlement. Toward where the rift had brought her in. Toward where she needed to escape.
The moon above shone brighter. Both Sellenia and Morwen. Their light was blinding now. Calling to her. Demanding something.
She ignored them. She focused on moving forward. One step. Then another. Her body screamed in pain.
She needed to get out before midnight. Before the trial claimed her.
She remembered the words. Slaughter your relatives. That was what the rift had wished for.
One man had a spear. He attempted to restrain her. He yelled, but she could not make out any sound.
When he got close, she slit his throat with her right hand. It hurt. Every movement sent pain through her shifting broken arm.
Everyone stared. They were not scared but surprised. For the oni, fear was more like a nuisance rather than an actual emotion.
Everyone, man and woman, came at her. She moved gracefully between them. Under the two pale moons and the red one, she slit each throat. Each body that fell down made her hand hurt even more. The blade in her grip grew slick with blood.
Before she had known it, she was traversing the streets. Bodies lay scattered by the road. Each life left behind her like markers of her path.
She entered one home. A hut made of carved wood and bamboo. She saw an adolescent oni. One covering the one behind her, which seemed to be younger. She took a step forward. The boy lunged helplessly. She grabbed his hair and snapped his neck with a quick twist.
She regarded the little girl. She was not crying. It was as if she had accepted fate. Her eyes were dead. Empty.
She felt like she was doing something wrong. She was doing something terrible. But that was human emotion. She was an oni. She was merely doing what the rift had ordered her to do. And somewhere inside her, she recalled that these people were not real people. And she clutched to that fact like a lifeline. It was odd because normally she wouldn't need to clutch to this fact.
'I am supposed tor revive my clan...' She thought half hazily.
She stepped forward. Stroked the hair of the girl. Covered her eyes with her bloodied palm.
Moments later she exited the hut, dripping with more blood. Finally, hut by hut, place by place, she visited them like a silent storm reaping what was long since sowed.
When she passed a large bonfire, she saw a man tied to a post. Bodies of bloodied men surrounded him. He was human. Someone who was going to get slaughtered for nourishment.
The man observed her. The bonfire reflecting in his pupils. For a moment, she wanted to cross over there. Rip his body apart and bathe in human blood. The desire rose in her throat like hunger.
'No.'
That was not required. There was no need to shed needless blood.
She spotted someone. An oni elder trying to flee. They fell. She recognized them with grim recognition. She made it to them in less than a second.
Her words were blunt.
"I will kill you. Do not struggle."
The old man lay down there for a while. Observing the red churning sky. It was as if the sky was covered in blood because of her. He chuckled. He laughed.
"Go ahead, false heiress."
It put her off. Oni were supposed to be not expressive. Yet he laughed.
"You laugh."
The old man looked at her and gave a faint breath through his nose. "It is a remnant of long years spent among humans. They call it laughter. They say it makes the burden of life easier to carry. For once, they are not wrong."
She drove the blade through the man's chest. Plunging down in a downward motion. The man's body tensed for a second, then relaxed as the blood blade diluted into his wound.
By now it was a slaughterhouse. Everyone was either dead or in hiding.