Beneath the mottled sky of early dawn, watched by the crimson eye of the sun peering over the distant sea, Li Chen awoke in a forest near the steel Daiichi Torii of the Yasukuni Shrine, his carbonized scales still smoking. He stood waveringly, the ache in his back and arms near crippling and his equilibrium shot. The pounding in his head was relentless, the demon surely inhabiting his skull trying to split it asunder. Worse, a growing pressure in his chest made it difficult to breathe like some invisible hand was crushing his lungs in its merciless grip. Gasping for air and clutching at his breast, Li Chen coughed to relieve the pressure but it did little good.

Scanning the area, Li Chen was uncertain as to where he was. He remembered a flash of light and then he woke here. Was he dead? Was this the afterlife? His head jerked. To the west he heard faint voices. Perhaps the whispers belonged to his ancestors or even the gods seeking to help guide him to his final destination. “Jee Hae,” he rasped. Li Chen followed the murmurs, gritting his teeth against the pain of every step. He shambled beneath the bronze Daini Torii and eventually came to the cypress hewn shinmon, the gate to the Yasukuni Shrine. Both doors bore the Chrysanthemum Crest of the Tenno.

“This is not the afterlife,” Li Chen rasped feeling betrayed. His cursed life was not at an end. Jee Hae did not wait for him. The voices he had been following were louder now and he could finally understand them; they were Japanese prayers.

Beyond the shinmon, upon the holy grounds of Yasukuni Shrine stood a complex consisting of numerous religious buildings dedicated to the worship of the kami, or spirits, of those who had fallen fighting valiantly for Nippon-koku beginning with the dead of the Boshin War. Many of Tokyo’s citizens had fled here to be among the enshrined essences of Japan’s greatest warriors. Sheltered in such a holy place, they felt safe from the diabolical presence that had invaded their empire. Surely the aragami could not step foot upon these hallowed grounds without drawing the wrath of the kami.

The monks of the shrine gathered within the Honden, Yasukuni’s most sacred building where the kami were enshrined and resided. It was here that the monks worshiped and communed with the kami’s will. Even now beneath its jade hued hipped-gable roof they chanted before the seat occupied by the kami’s divine presence seeking deliverance.

Nearby, beneath the flickering lantern light of the vast communal prayer hall known as the Haiden, those survivors who had found their way to Yasukuni prayed to their ancestors for salvation. They mourned Tokyo having been witness to the smoke of her burning, saying, “What city was like unto this great city!” And they cast ash and dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, “Alas, alas, our great ageless city has fallen! What took centuries to build was in mere hours rendered desolate. Why?” they asked the heavens. “Why had the aragami come?”

Li Chen heard their lamentations rekindling his rage. His clenched fists quivered dreadfully as the knuckles snapped. “They ask why I have come.” His pain fled in the face of his wrath, subsumed by the demonic strength that poured once more into his broken body knitting his wounds with malevolent will. With little reverence, Li Chen ripped the sacred doors of the shinmon from their hinges and proceeded inside treading on Tokyo’s holiest ground with bloodied feet.

At the sound of his coming, Yasukuni Shrine went deathly still. Not even the blessed monks dared continue the divine chant of shōmyō. Stopping in the courtyard, Li Chen tasted the air and followed the scent of despair to the Haiden. Stalking toward the structure, he could hear the people cowering fearfully inside. Their choking sobs. Their fluttering hearts.

The people squeaked and jabbered senselessly as they saw the beast’s macabre shadow grow through the white paper screens that served as the walls of the hall. Relishing their fear, Li Chen slowly ripped through one of the screens before peeking through at those inside. “You pray to your gods for salvation,” he spat maliciously at their sniveling faces swollen with sorrow. “Who do you think sent me?” He tore a section of the frail wall out to step inside and the people fled to the rear of the structure trampling one another in their haste. Li Chen’s jaws dripped with anticipation.

Streaking out of the sky, Chris rammed into Li Chen knocking him away from the Haiden’s entrance only to roll nigh unconscious next to his downed enemy. Disoriented from the collision, he was unable to defend himself against Li Chen who delivered a vicious shot to Donner’s face opening a cut over his left eye. Chris attempted to fight back, wincing at the pain in his broken right hand as he traded blows. Throwing a left hook, Chris overextended leaving himself vulnerable. Li Chen seized the opening and slashed Donner across the back gashing him open down to the bone. Hurting and battling shock but unwilling to back down, Donner threw another left only for Li Chen to counter with a right. Their two fists slammed into one another with a crack shattering the bones in Chris’ hand. With his stunned opponent clasping his busted left hand, Li Chen brought his right down like a club delivering a punishing blow at the point where Chris’ neck and shoulder met sending Donner to the ground.

With his enemy down, Li Chen turned once more to the Haiden. Entering the prayer hall, the people screamed for their savior. Chris came crashing through after Li Chen, his broken fists shining with crackling energy. Landing on Li Chen’s back, he pounded the beast to his knees pouring what power remained into this final attack. With Li Chen occupied, the Japanese summoned the courage to dash past the brawling pair to escape. Furious that they were getting away, Li Chen writhed and twisted, bucking beneath Donner. Flailing wildly, he finally caught Chris by the shirt and jerked him off launching him across the vast hall into a wood pillar, the beam splintering and snapping at impact. Li Chen then disappeared outside.

Chasing after a knot of survivors across the shrine’s courtyard, Li Chen’s hunt ended abruptly when Chris landed clumsily between him and his prey. “You will not keep me from my vengeance!” Li Chen vowed. Chris struggled to keep his guard up taking shot after furious shot. As a right slipped through, Chris’ head snapped back on impact to the boom of artillery fire and he momentarily blacked out. Another shot slammed into the side of his head, the blow thundering in the darkness behind his eyelids accompanied by a flash of lightning. That exploding gasp revealed Chipilly Ridge spread out before him. Donner blinked, stupefied.

“Get out of my way!” Li Chen struck a semi-conscious Chris aside.

Belly down in the dirt, Chris labored to rise. “Stay down, Donner,” Sergeant Kinser ordered, German machineguns firing overhead.

Donner shook his head and struggled to his feet. “Stay down!” Li Chen shrieked, hammering Donner once more to the earth. “Just stay down! I don’t want you.”

His heartbeat drumming loudly in his ears, Chris found himself in the grit of No Man’s Land. His company had stalled short of the objective, tied down by German small arms fire coming from an emplacement on a hill in front of them. The company couldn’t retreat and they couldn’t advance, trapped in the crossfire.

“Damn Huns!” Kinser shouted off to Donner’s right.

German artillery soon found them exposed, the gray sky showering them with steel and fire. Donner’s comrades were chewed apart by shrapnel and blasted to bits all around him. The company had to move or they’d all die, but they refused to budge, hunkering down in the craters and waiting for the end.

“We have to take the hill!” Chris yelled.

“Your orders are to stay with the unit,” Kinser countered. “There is nothing beyond that ridge for us.”

Donner stayed with the company though he knew it to be suicide. That was his duty. With so many wounded, only he could save them. Struggling to drag them from harm’s way, Chris froze when he heard the Japanese screaming for him just beyond the hill.

“Donner!” Kinser barked drawing Chris’ attention back to the wounded company. “Stay with the unit.”

Despite his loyalty to his fellow soldiers, Chris couldn’t ignore the pleas coming from beyond the hill. Glancing toward the ridge once more, Donner swore he saw a glimmer of sunlight that seemed out of place in this somber realm. As he began to crawl forward, his comrades clutched at him. “Don’t abandon us,” they cried. “Stay with us. Stay where you belong.”

Chris glanced back at the friends he had lost decades ago in the Great War. But staring into their milky dead eyes, their cadaverous faces smeared in the mud of their graves, Donner realized for the first time that he did not belong among his fallen friends. Life beckoned. “No,” he softly told the phantoms and the guilt of his past faded away.

Donner rose against the agony, the exhaustion, and the thoughts of hopelessness. He rose to fight even though there was little left in him. Chris rose to battle the beast because he knew no one else could. Tottering before the might of Li Chen, Chris had only his will left to fight with. The glow of his aura had dissolved and with it most of his power. His pale skin was now swollen and bruised, scabbed and caked in dry blood. Holding his side and barely able to stand, Chris was no longer the god so many had thought he was. Now, he was simply a man fighting for what he knew to be right.

Li Chen leered, apoplectic, into Chris’ swollen face. “For them? You fight for them? Would die for them? Have I not done enough? Have I not suffered enough?” Talons extended, Li Chen slashed in a ferocious upward arc gashing Donner’s side wide open and sending him crashing into the Honden. Li Chen waited, claws still extended, but Donner never reemerged.

***

Empress Kōjun and her daughters, the princesses Teru, Hisa, and Taka, penitently tended to the refugees camped in the Fukiage Gardens, humbly offering rice and water while medics ministered to the wounded. Working the line, the empress was troubled by the funereal faces and hollow eyes of the women and children who shuffled by ghostlike mechanically offering faint thanks through thin lips for what little Kōjun gave them. After receiving their meager bounty, the refugees sat hunched throughout the grounds averring one another while absently eating with their fingers, not tasting their food. Among the survivors, infants cried mournfully for fathers who were never to come home while others suckled on the withered tits of their mothers.

Hirohito wandered the Imperial Palace grounds inspecting the damage caused by the quake and speaking reassuringly to his subjects, an act considered base and offensive by traditional protocol. Trailing behind him were Kotohito, Araki, Makoto, and Senjūrō debating quietly between themselves in their lord’s wake. Crossing over a stone bridge, the Tenno asked for a damage report.

“Structures are relatively undamaged, my lord,” Makoto replied. “Most importantly, the walls are intact and generators are fully functioning. Our position is secure.”

Hirohito nodded. “I will want the refugees moved to the East Garden. We should have enough space for them in the administrative buildings there. I will not have them exposed to the elements. They have suffered through enough.”

Makoto bowed his head. “As you command, Tenno.”

“Supplies?”

“For the moment we are not in danger, but rail lines to the north and south have been severed. Attempting to make our way through the city is not advised. If we are to seek resupply it will need to be by sea, though I recommend evacuating everyone north to lessen the strain on our merchant fleet and place survivors within close proximity of food stocks.”

“What of the aragami?”

Makoto surrendered his position to Kotohito who answered, “Aerial reconnaissance units have not sighted him for some time.”

“When was the last patrol?” Hirohito queried.

“An hour ago.”

“Perhaps he is dead,” Baron Araki offered. “The pillar of fire may have been a sign of his passing.”

The Tenno and his retinue continued to assess the situation as they approached the Hanzo Gate along the western wall devising a future plan of action. Nearing the gate, Hirohito angrily turned to Kotohito when he saw the scant force defending the wall. “Where are the guards?”

Kotohito in turn yelled at the few men still manning their post. “What happened to your comrades?”

“They went to the city,” one of the old men replied.

“For what reason?” The guards nervously eyed one another. “For what reason did they abandon their post!” Kotohito pressed, marching up to their position.

“To watch the battle,” they blurted when confronted by their commander.

Kotohito got in the face of the eldest guard. “And you let them desert their post, yarou?”

“Someone is coming!”

“Who is it?” Araki asked.

The guards peered over the wall. “It appears to be more refugees.”

“Open the gates,” Hirohito ordered.

The great wooden doors groaned as they parted. Two dozen men, women, and children rushed inside. Baron Araki grabbed one of the men by the arm. “Where do you come from?” The man tried to pull away, crazy eyed and incoherently babbling. “Still yourself, man. What are you running from?”

“Yasukuni Shrine,” the man finally choked out, gasping for air. “You must close the gates. He comes.”

“Who comes?”

“Aragami!” a guard cried.

Hirohito looked up to see Li Chen charging towards them. “Close the gate!” The guards hurried to seal the doors.

“You’ve led him right to us, fool!” Araki cursed, shoving the man away in disgust.

The Tenno and his retinue hurried back towards the Fukiage Gardens and the survivors. “We must evacuate everyone to the East Gardens.”

***

Within the shadowy confines of the sacred Honden, sprawled before the throne of the kami, Chris lay semiconscious in a luminous pool of sunlight that spilled through the wall he had crashed through. He stirred when he heard the cries of the Japanese fleeing in the face of Li Chen, their appeals reverberating across the vast distance rousing his fleeting senses. Realizing their plight, he weakly attempted to stand. Straining to get up, his arms shook and knees buckled sending him back to the floor. Donner stubbornly tried again only to once more collapse in a broken heap. There was nothing left in him.

Searching within the empty shell of his body for one final reserve to rally with, he found doubt. It would be so easy to let go. Why suffer any longer? Just give up and be free of the pain. Were they worth such sacrifice?

They continued to call for Chris beseeching his intervention. Tearing up, he trembled before the throne struggling against his crippled body. He couldn’t abandon them. In spite of the agony and doubt, his heart ached for them in this their final hour. With what hope remained, he prayed for one ounce more of strength with his soul as the price. Steadily slipping into unconsciousness, he beheld a coruscating kernel alight upon the seat of the throne. A ragged, dry breath passed his split lips as his eyes glassed over. That breath carried one word: “Please.”

***

Hirohito’s personal guard defiantly held their ground in the Fukiage Gardens in a vain effort to slow Li Chen’s rampage and give the refugees time to evacuate to the East Garden. Led by a penitent Prince Kotohito and armed with bolt action Arisakas, light machineguns, flamethrowers, and hand grenades, they used scattered ramparts, moats, and hastily erected obstacles to establish a fragile if effective defense applying disciplined tactics when possible and fanatical resistance when all else failed. Here they defended their empire to the last in a noble final stand for the preservation of their people, obedient to the will of their Tenno. When their ammo ran out, those soldiers who possessed swords and knives used them and the others resisted with their hands and teeth. “Banzai!” they proudly shouted at the end.

To their rear, Hirohito hovered at the fringe of battle on the banks of the Hasurike moat anxiously urging the refugees to hurry. Time was short and the sound of gunfire advanced ever closer. “The line must hold,” he told himself while watching the panicked crowd surge over the stone bridge into the East Garden at a pace that seemed maddeningly slow. “It must.”

When the last of the women and children had crossed over, Makoto and the rest of the Imperial retinue rushed to follow. Makoto stopped halfway across the bridge, turning to see the Tenno still staring off toward the field of battle. “My lord?”

Standing there, Hirohito gazed into the fog of war as it crept across the palace grounds toward him. The guns had gone deathly quiet. The cries had ceased. All was still within the fumes. The Tenno continued to peer into the vapors as if searching for some sort of prophetic sign to emerge from its churning, amorphous mass that this nightmare was at an end. Within that haze the shadow of Li Chen soon loomed large, his cyclopean form issuing from the acrid clouds. It was as Hirohito feared. The sacrifices made. Manchukuo devastated, Tokyo lost, the many dead, all for naught. The beast could not be stopped. He was fate, inevitable fate. Retreat was futile. The East Garden would not be safe. Nowhere was. They could flee north but the beast would continue his pursuit following them to the ends of the earth seeking its vengeance. This divine wrath would not be sated until the final embers of Nippon-koku had gone cold as clay.

“Our wickedness brought him to this world. I have rendered this upon my people,” Hirohito confessed to the winds. “If only I had stood against the militarists. For all the blood we have shed, for our grave hubris, the beast has come to reset the balance.”

Makoto took the Tenno by the arm and gently tugged. “We must go my lord.”

Hirohito turned to the aged man, staring intensely into his eyes before finally saying, “No.” He broke away from his retinue and headed toward Li Chen.

“My lord!” Makoto cried.

“He is mad,” Araki declared as Makoto went to follow the Tenno. “Where are you going?”

“I cannot abandon him.”

“You are as mad as he is.” Araki and Kotohito grabbed Makoto by the arms.

“What are you doing? Let go of me!” Makoto demanded.

The pair dragged Makoto back with them into the East Garden despite his protestations.

Dwarfed by the gargantuan stature of Li Chen, Hirohito meekly confronted the heaving dragon. The Tenno averted his eyes in a sign of respect. “Surely you are the wrath of the gods made flesh,” he professed tremulously. “A wrath well earned.”

A sickly cackling rattled behind Li Chen’s rigid lips. “What do you know of it?”

“I beg your forgiveness.” The Tenno took a knee and bowed humbly in the dust. “The evils we have perpetrated in our pursuit of empire can never be excused.”

“You knew?” Li Chen grunted and coughed in anger. “You knew and did nothing? You condemn your people with this admission!”

“My people do not deserve to suffer so,” Hirohito pleaded.

“And the people of Manchuria did?”

Hirohito kowtowed, placing his forehead to the earth at Li Chen’s feet in the ultimate act of submission to the beast. “Please, do not make my subjects pay for my failure as Tenno. This dishonor is mine alone. Let there be no more death. Has the world not seen enough this day? For my children, for my people, I offer my life unto you. Let my blood cleanse this curse from my land.”

A bubbling growl gurgled in Li Chen’s throat as he scrutinized Hirohito. His black eyes then passed over the monarch and fixated on the East Garden. “You are not worthy of such a noble end,” Li Chen rancorously judged before stepping over the Tenno.

“No!” Hirohito yelled when he realized where Li Chen was headed. He lunged in front of the beast only to be smacked aside.

There was nothing left to stand in Li Chen’s murderous way. He pressed forward toward that which had always been his target: the women and children of Nippon-koku. Bashing through the gate to the East Garden, he followed the scent of his prey and proceeded toward the kuretake-ryō within which many of the refugees hid. He tore out the wall and leered at the women and children cowering inside. Mothers clasped their children close to their breasts, whimpering and wailing at their discovery by the beast. Li Chen grinned wickedly at the huddled masses. He shrieked at the innocent souls, bearing his claws as he prepared to pounce.

A pale arm seized Li Chen around his wide neck jerking him back. The beast squealed and fought to reach his victims, digging in his heels and leaning with his great weight. Chris tightened his grip restraining Li Chen as he thrashed and screamed inhumanly. “No,” Chris stated emphatically.

The two thrust into the air, Donner dragging Li Chen into the sky far above the palace. Li Chen struggled furiously as the pair soared higher and higher into the firmament. The azure heavens gradually darkened and the stars blinked into being as they passed through the stratosphere and entered the mesosphere. Warmth receded with their approach to the cosmic boundary of their world though neither noticed in their fierce battle above the planet. On the verge of the cold sea of space, Li Chen’s flailing lessened as he asphyxiated in the thin air. With Li Chen no longer resisting, Chris forged a psychic spike around his right fist and drove it into the beast’s skull. He intended to immolate the monster’s feral soul, frying Li Chen’s mind with a searing blast of light. But first Chris had to know where this creature had come from. What if there were others? And what had been the monster’s plan? Delving into the raging fugue that surrounded the beast’s spirit, Chris was shocked to discover Li Chen’s buried humanity. Entering the boy’s memories, he glimpsed the beast’s tragic destiny.

Li Chen jerked to life with the prodding of his mind and twisted around to grab Chris by the throat. The two fought at Earth’s edge until gravity seized them and sent the pair hurtling in a fiery trail across the sky. Terra rushing towards them, the two crashed into the lush agricultural fields of Saitama with a boom, the ground buckling in a series of waves that shook the birds from the outlying trees and sent a great plume of dirt and dust into the air.

Li Chen crawled first from the crater. Rolling onto his back, he clutched at his chest spewing up viridescent blood; gritting his chipped teeth against the piercing ringing in his ears while the world spun wildly overhead. Wheezing, his eyes fluttered open to see the distant, smoldering ruins of Tokyo. Incensed at the sight of the city, Li Chen clumsily flipped over determined to return and finish the massacre he had begun. His spine broken, he dragged his crippled legs pathetically behind him. After several feet, his shattered body could go no further. He bitterly lashed out at the distant city, reaching futilely for an impossible goal.

Battle scarred and weary, Chris weakly lifted himself out of the crater. He found Li Chen prostrate nearby pounding the earth in frustration. “Have you not seen enough death?” Donner grimly asked in Mandarin absorbed from Li Chen’s memories.

Defenseless from his injuries, Li Chen croaked, “Will you kill me now?”

Chris sighed raggedly. “No one else has to die.”

“Someone always has to die. It is the damned who linger.”

“You must let it go.”

“I cannot forgive them. I cannot.” Li Chen hacked up blood. Gasping for breath, he mewled pathetically.

“Let the pain go.”

“It is too late.” Rolling onto his broken back, Li Chen looked up at the heavens. “I am sorry, Jee Hae,” he conceded. “All that I have done…what I have become. I cannot be redeemed. There is nothing human left in me. Even though death nears, I cannot let go of my hate.”

“Why?” Chris asked in pity.

“It is all I have. Do what you have come to do,” Li Chen begged Donner. “End this suffering.”

Chris slowly approached Li Chen’s broken body. He hesitated above the dying beast, gathering strength for the killing blow. When he was ready, Donner knelt down and placed a shining hand on Li Chen’s forehead. Delving once more into Li Chen’s mind, Chris prepared to scorch his brain when he dredged up a wisp of memory.

Upon the steel tracks leading to Harbin, Li Chen looked off to the horizon. The dusk’s rays made the rails shine like silver forming divine tracks that stretched off to the sun itself. His imagination followed those tracks all the way to the golden vista.

‘I dreamt of what waited there just beyond,’ Chris recollected. ‘I was gonna see the world. Make my mark.’

Li Chen was so young. His face was smooth and beaming, unmarred by the shadow of stubble. Far from the beast he had become, Li Chen was a thin boy in baggy peasant clothes dreaming up noble adventures and praying to the gods for some quest to help him escape the mundane life of the village.

‘I was so headstrong. Only sixteen and wanting to be a man before my time. Why was I in such a rush?’

The sun began to slip away beneath the hills. Absently Li Chen reached to save it from oblivion, but he could not halt approaching night. The boy disappeared into the darkness and Chris followed. Corrupted by the laelap, twisted into the beast, Donner witnessed Li Chen take up the mantle of champion, battling to protect the people of Manchuria from the Japanese. Charging forward valiantly into battle, he decimated armies.

‘My chance to be a hero,’ Chris’ voice echoed. ‘My own crusade.’

But Li Chen could not save his people. So many lives lost. There was so much rage in Li Chen, palpable, suffocating hate. For the world. For himself.

‘Why hold onto your pain?’

“Because it’s all I got left,” Chris murmured. “Something to remind me there were once good times.” In his mind’s eye, Chris saw the German boy pleading for mercy. No, not mercy. Absolution. Tears welled up in Donner’s eyes. “I understand,” he whispered to Li Chen. They were the same. The pain. The loss. The loneliness. “You are not alone,” Chris promised him. “The world has not abandoned you.”

Searching Li Chen’s flesh, Chris discerned the poison in his blood. He directed what little energy remained from his body into Li Chen’s. Focusing on the nanocytes, Donner gradually drew them out. Silver fluid oozed from between Li Chen’s cracked scales as his bones knit and old wounds healed. His form began to shrink and wither. Soon the scales fell away to reveal the young man Li Chen had once been underneath, naked and fair. Taking a full, healthy breath, he opened his eyes and marveled at the transformation. The evil of the Cthon had been exorcised. Sitting up to thank Chris for this blessing he saw that Donner’s eyes had glazed over and the glow of his skin was gone, the flesh now wan. Without warning, Chris collapsed to the ground.

“No!” Li Chen cried. He gathered Donner’s limp body into his arms and held him. Mourning his fallen redeemer, the petty rage Li Chen had felt for the Japanese faded from his heart.

***

“Your proxy is no more,” the laelaps passively informed the daimōn.

Akkad said nothing as he exited the emerald circle and wandered into the darkness from whence he came.

Next Chapter: Chapter 26