Kenzo Shadowblade's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Kenzo followed the demon's blood down a narrow tunnel. The trail led into a chamber deeper than the temple's roots. The wounded thing pressed itself into a far corner, breathing wet and slow. Its wounds had already begun to close. Kenzo raised both blades and struck for the throat. The steel bit, then slid off dark hide like a knife on ice. The demon barely flinched. Its skin had turned hard where the blood ran black. He struck again. Same result. The cuts he had made when it was full were healing over into armor. Plain steel would not finish this. Nino had known its schedule, its weakness, everything. Now Nino was under the stone, and Kenzo stood alone with useless blades. Light rose behind him. Not the blue glow of the dead monk's beads. This light was white and cold, a bright cross burning at a man's chest. A short man in strange white armor stepped from the dark, older than his size suggested, jaw set hard. His boots made no sound on the stone. "You're cutting a thing that heals faster than you swing," the man said. "I watched this fight fail a hundred times." He spoke like he already knew the ending. Kenzo kept his blades up. "Who are you?" "Father Talious. I came a long way to reach this exact minute." He touched the cross at his chest. It flared brighter. "Your steel is clean. That's the problem. This creature only bleeds under its own kind of fire." The demon lunged. Kenzo shoved Talious aside and took the blow on his shoulder. He rolled, came up, and saw the priest press one palm flat toward him. "Your blades," Talious said. "Hold them out." Kenzo had no better plan. He thrust both blades forward. The cross-light poured down the steel and sank into it. The edges turned white-hot but did not burn his hands. The metal hummed. "Now," Talious said. "Before it closes again." Kenzo charged. The demon swung a heavy arm. He ducked under it and drove both burning blades up into the soft place beneath its jaw, the one wound that had not sealed. This time the steel did not slide. It sank deep. White fire spread through the demon from the inside. It screamed, thrashed once, and split apart in a burst of ash and black smoke. Then the smoke pulled together. It did not die. It funneled down through a crack in the floor, fleeing deeper still, wounded far worse than before but whole. The white light drained from Kenzo's blades. They cooled to ordinary steel in his hands. Talious lowered his palm, breathing hard. "That was one charge. I can't give you another for days." Kenzo stared at the crack where the demon had gone. He had hurt it badly. He had not killed it. And the only man who could arm his blades stood spent beside him, useless until the light returned.