Kuroba Asashin's Arc

Chapter 47 of 51

Kuroba stood at the edge of the clear ground with the odachi planted in the dirt. Kazrik faced him across ten paces of empty lane. The brutes pressed the sides of the corridor and would not step in. Behind Kazrik, the banners of his rear guard sagged in the wet air off the tower's cascade. Kuroba's arms shook. His chi was still locked behind the serpent monk's strike. He met Kazrik's red eyes and set his weight the way Kenji had taught him on the porch. Kazrik unhooked the lava blade from his hip. Heat came off it in a slow wave. "You walked here alone," he said. "Good." Kuroba did not answer. He watched Kazrik's front foot. A breath moved on his neck that was not wind. The air behind him thickened. Kuroba turned his head one degree and saw nothing, but he felt the pressure a body makes when it stands close. A hand settled on his shoulder. It weighed almost nothing. He knew the hand before he saw it. The old man’s spirit stood there, bald, thin, the stringy beard, the calm eyes. Kenji. He had been dead since the dragon. He was standing on the churned dirt beside Kuroba as if he had walked up from the porch. "Breathe," Kenji said. "The lock is not the river." Kuroba breathed. Kenji pressed his palm flat against Kuroba's shoulder. Something opened. The serpent monk's knot let go all at once, like a rope cut clean. The river did not trickle back. It came in a wall. Chi surged out of Kuroba in every direction. The ground under his feet cracked. Dust jumped a foot into the air across the whole field and hung there. The cascade water off the tower bent sideways in its fall. His skin lit from inside. A pale aura climbed his arms, his chest, his face, and rose above his head in a slow column that reached higher than the gate. The odachi in the dirt began to hum. Brutes at the edges of the lane dropped their weapons and stepped back. Some fell to their knees. The banners behind Kazrik snapped once and went slack. Kazrik lowered the lava blade an inch. His eyes widened inside the helmet. He did not speak. Kuroba felt the old thing in him sit down. The killer went quiet. What stood up in its place was steady and clean and enormous. He looked at his hand and saw light between his fingers. Kenji was already fading. "Finish it," he said, and was gone. Kuroba pulled the odachi from the dirt. The blade came up glowing. He took one step toward Kazrik, and the ground under that step held him like stone. Kazrik stepped back. The king of the Lotus Horizon watched from the gate with a single tear, muttering “….This power…. I know this power…”