Chapter Text
She hated Maki. Hated, hated her.
If she hadn’t left, Mai wouldn’t be in this position.
She tripped on a root and was sent sprawling. She let go of her borrowed weapon, catching herself on her arms before her chin could hit the dirt. A whimper cut through the night. She scrambled for the fallen naginata and did her best to ignore the aches and bruises that grew with each passing second.
A stray, delirious thought: This would be so much worse if Maki hadn’t left her uniform behind.
No, Mai clenched her jaw until it hurt, panicked breaths hitting the back of her teeth like animals trying to break free. She wasn’t going to give her sister anything. This was all her fault. Maki left to be a sorcerer, so Mai had to become a sorcerer too.
The crunching of wood, like bone, approached from behind. She dug the butt of the polearm into the ground, heaved herself up on doe legs. The multi-track voice that was chasing her grew louder, the only clue she had of the curse’s position in the darkness. She turned the edge of her weapon towards the sound, trying her best to copy a stance she’d seen her sister use.
Her entire body was trembling. The point of the blade shook so much it was surprising it hadn’t already fallen from her death grip. She didn’t know what she was doing.
Mai had barely been given enough time to get dressed in Maki’s abandoned clothes and to pick a weapon from storage, before being bundled into a car for her first mission. She wasn’t strong or fast. She’d never picked up a weapon before, much less trained with one. She still avoided the weak curses skittering in the corners of the estate, so weak nobody would ever assign them a grade. She cowered and clung and she'd been thrown into the deep end.
The Zen’in didn’t care. Maki had exorcized a Grade Three curse. Mai had to do better. And if she died, they’d just dangle her rotten corpse in front of her sister so they could laugh at her. She was an accessory to Maki, a by-product, something she had to drag around. She’d been discarded like offal but their blood wouldn’t allow that. So now she hung on her leash, strangling with each step Maki took forward.
Gods. It pissed her off so much. The anger was acidic in her stomach, burning her from the inside.
The cursed spirit breached the edge of her vision, lopping on three legs. Saw-teeth gargled begging words (help help me i’m lost mama help it's dark dark) and spit bubbling drool. It had no eyes to see Mai but numerous orifices on its bulbous head opened and closed, taking in her fear and disgust like delicacies. A curse from lost hikers and abandoned children, Mai remembered with a touch of irony amidst the apprehension.
She had to stop running. She couldn’t physically run anymore. Mai was lost, lost like all the children who’d died in these woods. There was a weapon in her hands. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it was all she had. So she’d use it. She didn’t want to die.
She braced herself, pushed forward with the polearm. Her half-hearted charge caught her hunter by surprise, somehow managing to sink the blade on its body. It moaned and pulled back, wounded. A giggle escaped Mai. She’d done it? No. The edges of the tear closed like it’d never existed and Mai realized with a sinking feeling she’d forgotten to imbue her cursed energy into the blade.
A step back, another almost fall as she felt around for the oily thing inside herself. It was never easy to grasp it, the energy wanting to exist away from her, in another place.
The curse pounced from the corner of her eye. She shrieked, flailed with the naginata, the weight of it escaping from her weaker hand and pulling her down. This time, she hit the ground shoulder first, the pole of her weapon wedged somewhere between her ribs, her arm and stones. Hooks pulled at her clothes. Something cold lanced through her bones before the pain hit, burning needles that exploded from her thigh and rolled across her body, freezing her breath with its intensity. It was worse than anything she'd felt before, worse than broken bones or burns or the cursed scratches from the basement ones.
The curse released its jaws to bite down again higher up on the fatter meat of her leg. Mai screamed. She bucked, dislodging its jaw, atavistic terror in every convolution. There was something solid in her hand and she grabbed that lifeline with all she had. Her vision was flashing with yellow-edge black spots, but the naginata moved as lightly as a bamboo broom in the surge of adrenaline. The curse flew back, but it righted itself on its three legs, teeth red. It wasn’t even wounded, so unbothered she might as well have hit it with an actual broom. She clambered onto her knees, heartbeat so fast it drowned out all sounds and signs that her body was sending.
An explosion rent the air.
Lightless, a burst of air crashed and rebounded, the soundwave slamming into Mai like a slap. Her ears rang and tittered as she blinked, refocusing on the forest. Mind blank with dread, she looked forward. Her blue eyes, pinprick small in their orbits, saw the curse first, charred and flopping around. Half-caught in the blast, it was missing half its limbs, gaps opened between the holes in its head, yipping in its approximation of pain. (hurts dark hurts hurts mama)
Like she’d been.
Everything spilled from her, fear and anger and hatred, the oil bubbling, roiling and rising to the surface. Mai wasn’t in a state to care about the numbness that wrapped around her hands, the sizzle of her energy as it dripped from the space inside her bones. The tool in her hands popped and frothed with all the pain of tonight. Wood and metal struck the spirit and again and again and again and again and again and fell from her trembling arms.
A mess of black and purple and red spread across rock, congealed like old, disgusting natto. It smoked into ephemeral black particles.
She felt nothing anymore.
The inside of her head was stilling, storm gone, waves lulling. When it became mirror smooth and clear, she noticed her body was beyond feeling as well. No legs, no arms, no heartbeat and no pain. The circles floating around her overtook her vision before her body hit the ground.