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“Bro, behind you!”
Hyakkimaru whirled around, raising his arms to defend himself. The ghoul bearing down on him became impaled on the twin blades, shrieking with pain in an inhuman voice that reverberated around the cave walls.
Dororo clutched Hyakkimaru's prosthetic arms close to her chest, backing slowly away from the fight. This one looked like it would be a tough one, especially in such cramped quarters, but it was nothing her bro couldn't tackle.
He was in excellent form, even after a full day of walking. Dororo had so been looking forward to curling up in front of a little fire in the shelter of this cave...but it had already been occupied. By one of the ugliest ghouls they'd encountered yet, and that was saying something.
It looked a bit like a caterpillar—no, maybe a centipede. But instead of dozens of insect-like appendages sprouting from its long, segmented body, they looked like human arms and legs. And they all seemed to have come from different people, too. Dororo shivered, hugging Hyakkimaru's arms closer. Was there a graveyard nearby that it raided for food or something?
She shook her head, forcing her attention away from the mismatched limbs shoving the ghoul's ponderous body along, or groping through the air towards Hyakkimaru. No point in spacing out or asking questions they'd probably find the answer to tomorrow. She needed to focus on the battle and see if she could help.
Hyakkimaru slashed his arms through the air, lopping off several of the ghoul's limbs in a spurt of blood. The ghoul recoiled with another shriek, then flipped over and burrowed into the ground. In a surprisingly short time for such a huge creature, its entire body had disappeared from sight. Nothing was left behind but the hole in the dirt and several human limbs that seemed to be decaying much faster than normal, now that they were disconnected from the ghoul's body.
Dororo waited for a moment to make sure it was gone, then let out a loud sigh of relief as she began to cross the cave. “It got away, huh? That's okay, bro; we can look for it in the morning—“
Hyakkimaru suddenly whirled to face her, blind eyes wide and pointed at the ground beneath her feet. “Dororo!”
She knew a moment of confusion before the world exploded around her. Clods of dirt flew through the air, the ground shook violently beneath her feet, and then an enormous, toothy maw opened up around her, closing in on all sides. Dororo only had time to let out a yelp of fear before the darkness snapped shut over her head.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The swirling mass of evil intent dove into the ground beneath his feet, the glow of its body growing dimmer and dimmer behind the layers of dead earth and stone. Hyakkimaru didn't relax, knowing the ghoul wasn't dead yet. He stood at the ready, straining every sense available to him, trying to predict where it would emerge again.
Because it would show up again. And Hyakkimaru would be waiting for it.
The pit-pat of small feet approached from behind him, and Dororo's voice echoed around the cave. “It got away, huh?”
The ghoul was moving. Slithering along, far enough below their feet that Hyakkimaru couldn't feel a thing, its ungainly body curling around so that its head....
He drew in a sharp breath, spinning around to follow its movement. There it was, right beneath the glowing silhouette of.... “Dororo!”
Before he could take even a single step towards his friend, the swirling reddish glow erupted from the ground, enveloping her in a single lunge. He heard a faint cry before the enormous jaws of the beast crashed shut. It was Dororo's cry of fear...or maybe...pain....
A cry of his own ripped from his throat. But this cry was not one of fear. No, it was a wordless scream of anguish, hatred, blistering rage. Because the monster had taken his friend, the one bright spot of light in a world filled with shadows and crippling pain.
And now...he was alone.
Hyakkimaru ran forward, still screaming, and slashed his arms viciously across the underside of the ghoul's body, as it reared high over his head. The beast recoiled with a screech that throbbed painfully in Hyakkimaru's ears, but he didn't flinch. He just raised his voice to match its volume.
The ghoul darted forward on its many mismatched limbs, but Hyakkimaru easily jumped out of its path. He vaulted over several grasping hands and landed on the creature's back, stabbing his left arm in as far as it would go to act as an anchor. With his other arm, he hacked mercilessly at the nearest arms and legs.
He could tell, from the rushing of wind against his face, that the ghoul had run out of the cave. It was thrashing around, throwing its bulk against rock and tree in an attempt to shake him off. But Hyakkimaru bared his teeth and doggedly hung on, stabbing his arms one after another into its body, gradually inching down to the end. The ghoul screamed and roared at the agony ripping its body apart, but Hyakkimaru did not relent.
This monster's pain was as nothing to his. It was a mindless, senseless beast, existing only to fulfill its degraded lust for death and destruction. But Hyakkimaru...he was a gaping wound. A bleeding chasm, that for such a brief time had been filled with something wholesome and pure. No more...no more....
Hyakkimaru's throat ached, as though he'd been slashing his own neck to ribbons, rather than slicing this hideous monster to pieces. He could feel blood splashing across his face, he could taste it in his howling, gaping mouth. He was dimly aware that the monster had stopped moving beneath him, but he didn't care. He just kept stabbing, ripping, tearing, rending apart the abomination that had gouged out his heart.
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He hated it, hated it, hated it—
“Bro, please! Please stop!”
But he couldn't stop. All he had left was this aching, unending pit of blood, death, destruction, he had to keep going, had to make it suffer—
Something soft and warm touched his cheek. It was wet, but not like the warm blood splashing up at him from the ghoul's body. It was...different, but...familiar....
“It's okay, bro,” said a small voice in his ear when he slowly let his arms fall. “It's okay. I'm here.”
Another soft something touched his other cheek, gently turning his head to the side. The dull, dead shape of the corpse beneath him faded from view, and instead he saw an outline that was so bright against the encroaching darkness that he thought it would have blinded him if he had eyes.
He knew that shape. He knew those small hands, gently pressing against his cold cheeks. Drawing a ragged breath, Hyakkimaru started to reach out for the light. Just in time, he remembered that his arms ended in blades, and he let them drop by his sides instead. With every sense available to him, he drank in that familiar presence.
“Do...roro...?”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Hot tears rolled down Dororo's face. She felt disgusting all over, covered in the blood and gore of the ghoul. Her passage down its gullet had been hot, dark, and terrifying, and she'd never been so relieved for a breath of fresh air. But it didn't matter how dirty or slimy she was. Right now, all that mattered was Hyakkimaru.
She tried to wipe away some of the blood that had splashed up onto his face, but only succeeded in smudging it and smearing more filth around. “It's me,” she sniffled, hating how much her voice trembled. But she was scared, and not just because of the ghoul.
The look in Hyakkimaru's face as he'd sliced open the monster, letting her claw her way out of its innards. The way his gritted teeth and wordless scream made him seem like a wild animal, rather than a human.
Was this what that priest had been trying to warn her about? That if Hyakkimaru kept killing demons viciously and indiscriminately, he'd end up as one of them?
That thought scared Dororo more than all the monsters they'd faced combined. Hyakkimaru was...her friend, her brother, her...family. The closest she'd had to one since her mother had died.
“Dororo...?” His voice was so hoarse, it sounded painful. It could sometimes be hard to understand Hyakkimaru's muted expressions, but he looked like he was straining to see her, leaning forward and helplessly lifting his arms before letting them drop back down again.
“It's me,” she repeated, wishing for the hundredth time that Hyakkimaru had eyes that worked, so he could look like right at her and she could prove it. But he couldn't even reach out with his hands and feel her face. His prosthetic arms lay somewhere among the pieces of the ghoul's corpse, but even if she found them and slipped them over the blades at the end of his arms, he wouldn't be able to feel her skin. He wouldn't be able to trace the shape of her face and confirm for himself that it was her.
The only thing she could do was press her forehead to his, stroke her fingers across his cheeks, and hope that he believed her. She didn't know what he saw when he looked at her, if he could identify her by the color of her soul or however it worked. He usually had no trouble identifying her—but then, he probably just listened for her voice a lot of the time.
“Come on,” she whispered, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead back and forth against his. “You know me, bro. I'm right here.”
“Dororo...you're alive....” Hyakkimaru leaned forward, his cheek sliding against hers until his face came to rest in the crook of her neck.
For a second, she wondered what on earth he was doing, but as he settled there, moving only to draw in a ragged breath, she thought she understood. He couldn't see her, couldn't feel her with his hands. But one part of his skin that was intact was his face. So rubbing his face against hers was the closest he could come to distinguishing the details of what she looked like. And pressing his lips against the side of her neck was to feel the pulse beating through the vein just under her chin.
It was weird and a bit uncomfortable, but it was the best he could do. And that broke Dororo's heart.
“Yeah,” she murmured, hoping he was paying attention to her voice vibrating against him. “I'm alive. We're both alive. We're gonna be okay.”
She carefully wrapped her arms around him, as far as they would go. It was an awkward position, one of her arms trapped under one of his and the other reaching over his other shoulder. And he stank. They both stank.
“Hey, bro, we should go down to the river and get washed off,” Dororo suggested. “We'll have to find your arms and wash them off too before we put them back on. But don't worry, I can help you with that.”
Hyakkimaru gave her a little grunt of acquiescence with each sentence, but neither of them budged an inch.
“It's gonna be cold,” Dororo said, thinking out loud. “No sun to dry us off. Guess we'll need to build a fire too. And we'll sit close so we can keep each other warm. How's that sound, bro?”
“Mmm,” was his only response.
“Yeah, we'll sleep good tonight,” Dororo said. “It's too bad this one didn't have part of your body, but that's okay. Better luck next time, right?”
“Mmm.”
“We should really get going. It'll be harder to get the blood out if we wait until it dries, you know. And I'm bushed. The sooner we get that fire going, the sooner we can go to sleep!”
“Mmm.”
Neither of them let go. Just a little longer, they both seemed to be saying. Just let me stay here a little longer. Tomorrow, we'll be back to normal, but for now...just for this moment...remind me that you're here. Remind me that I'm not alone.
So they remained in their awkward position long past the point their tired muscles begged them to move. And neither of them minded.