"But be—fo—re that," Yorimitsu wheezed, his voice bubbling through the blood in his throat. He didn't aim it at Yoshiro. He aimed at the heavens.
TWANG.
The white-hot arrow shrieked into the sky, and like loyal hounds, the three rotating spheres of orange fire followed its wake. They began to spin in a tightening spiral, accelerating until a blue void appeared between them. The grey, ash-choked sky of the abandoned village was suddenly illuminated with a blinding, solar brilliance. For a moment, the dead of night looked like high noon.
"Fall... Honoo no Ya!" Yorimitsu's voice boomed, vibrating the roof tiles of a nearby wall.
The single arrow at the apex of the sky turned. As it plunged back toward the earth, it passed through the spinning halo of fire. With every rotation, the arrow fractured one became ten, ten became a hundred, until a thousand shafts of burning flames rained down upon the village.
"Woahh," Yoshiro murmured, his eyes reflecting the falling stars. "Dangerous. His Reiryoku spiked to the Fourth Rank for a heartbeat... did he sacrifice a piece of his life-force for this potency?"
The abandoned houses were vaporised instantly by the solar heat, and as the first arrows scorched the ground around him, Yoshiro's body disintegrated.
Yoshiro exploded into a thousand individual snakes; the swarm skittered and coiled, a sea of grey and black scales moving with a hive-mind. Most arrows struck empty earth or incinerated a few unlucky serpents, but the bulk of the swarm slithered into the dancing shadows cast by the burning wreckage.
"How long can you keep it up?" Yoshiro's voice echoed, disembodied, coming from every corner of the space.
The golden rain began to thin. The thousands of arrows became hundreds, then tens, then finally, a single sputtering bolt of light. High above, the three spheres of fire flickered like dying candles before vanishing into cold smoke.
"Oho..."
Splat.
Yorimitsu hit the ground hard, his knees giving out entirely. The orange flames on his hands sputtered and died, leaving his palms charred and trembling.
Splash.
The sound was wet as a thousand individual snakes surged from the shadows, coiling around Yorimitsu's trembling legs, his waist, and finally his throat.
Yoshiro's body materialised from the squirming mass, his human form returning yet distorted. His eyes were now slitted yellow, and patches of thick, obsidian scales remained fused to his cheeks.
He held Yorimitsu off the ground by the neck, his fingers still elongated into the heads of small, hissing vipers that bit into Yorimitsu's skin.
"You are done now," Yoshiro whispered, a wide, jagged grin stretching through his mug. "Before you die, would you like to tell me who you are working for? Or would you rather I simply capture your soul and interrogate it? I hear the pain of a spiritual flaying is... quite unimaginable."
Yoshiro yanked Yorimitsu's head back by the hair, peering closely into his glazed, silver eyes.
"Can you even hear me? Or has your recklessness caused the poison to kill your brain already? Kukuku... I have no qualms either w—"
Slash.
The scream so loud it seemed to have come from the depths of hell came from Yoshiro's throat. The sound resonated through the burning huts of the abandoned village; it was a high-pitched wail of pure agony.
"HUUuuu... that was close," Yorimitsu murmured.
Yorimitsu stood up in his right hand, holding a blade forged from white-hot flames that seemed hotter than any previous one he had used because the ground beneath him began to crystallise. Though his body was still trembling slightly, he stood straight, his presence feeling even heavier and more refined than when the fight began.
Kkkkkkkgloppp!
The sound of meat hitting the dirt. In that single, blinding movement, Yorimitsu had dismantled Yoshiro.
Yoshiro's torso slid from his limbs, hitting the ground with a sickening wet thud. His arms and legs lay several feet away, severed. There was no massive spray of blood; the wounds had been instantly cauterised.
Where the limbs had been attached, the flames, a mix of black and white, continued to flicker. They didn't spread; they simply ate at the stumps.
"You… you… you should—" Yoshiro stammered, his voice bubbling with a mixture of agony and pure, unadulterated shock.
"Shouldn't be standing, right?" Yorimitsu cut through, walking forward with a terrifying, rhythmic calm. He brought his hands together, raising four fingers, two from each hand, pointing them toward the sky in a specialised mudra.
"Yes, your poison is potent. It would have definitely killed me," Yorimitsu continued, his voice regaining its cold, melodic edge. "But to think my luck would be so great. Lucky me, I came across Hakamadare. After killing it, I gained a certain… skill."
As he spoke, the ghostly, translucent pallor of his skin began to vanish. The healthy colour of living flesh returned to his face, and the unstoppable bleeding from his nose and ears simply ceased.
"So, what if you fought Hakamadare!" Yoshiro shrieked, his yellow eyes bulging. "Your path is supposed to be flames! How can you resist my poison? I saw you cough up blood! I felt the venom take hold! It was clearly working on you!"
"Hahaha... that was the worst of it, you know," Yorimitsu laughed, though his eyes remained as cold as ice. "I saw that our levels were similar, and I knew if I fought you head-on, the struggle would drag. I didn't have time for a fair fight. So, I made myself look weaker."
Yorimitsu leaned over the limbless torso. "After you 'poisoned' me, I used a Witch's Technique to rupture a vestigial organ that wouldn't affect me too much. I neutralised your venom the moment it entered, then mimicked its physical symptoms using the Witches' Body Transformation technique to lure you into range."
Yoshiro's mouth hung open, spit and blood dripping onto the ash.
"It's neat, right? The power of the Witches," Yorimitsu murmured. "Took a while for me to get the hang of it. And as for how I got Hakamadare's ability… look at this."
Yorimitsu pulled back his sleeve. Along the pale skin of his forearm, thick Black Lines began to slither like living ink. They pulsed with a rhythmic, ethereal blue light.
"Do you recognise this?!"
Yoshiro's breath hitched. His eyes locked onto the pulsing mark, and his entire body began to shake. His voice cracked, cutting off into a terrified wheeze.
"That… That's… where did you get that mark?" Yoshiro's voice was a jagged shard of glass. "You shouldn't have it! Commander [************] is the only one meant to carry that brand!"