POWER: A Tale of Greatness

CHAPTER 48

"You must pay for everything you have done to this country." Takeo pressed his hammer on his foe leaving an indent in the earth beneath the Serpent Dragon.

"Foolish human, I remember you." Orochi slithers around, swinging his tail at the samurai, only to miss. "Isn't it because of you that your Captain died in vain? The reason for the Council's downfall!"

Takeo lowers his stance, putting his huge Ōtsuchi over his shoulder, "I am aware of that, worm. Most of us blamed ourselves, especially me for I have done everything that led to his end." He stood against a collapsed structure, "I have accepted it, my fault all alone. The blame is on me, and the judgement is for me alone. I am aware of my mistakes and I am willing to face the consequences but you, a beast who have consumed everything for his own gain; the land, the people, even Amaterasu."

"Consume?" The Serpent Dragon laughs mischievously, "Did I hear your tiny little squeaks right? Allow me to put inside your tiny, useless mind the question... How can I devour the very thing that keeps me from leaving this hell?! Ever since I got my hands on that kindling ember, it bound me with its heat and had severed me from the strength I once possessed! I never had craved freedom until the shackles of these flames kept me still."

"You did not–"

"You thought I did that on purpose? It forced me to stay for so long! Thinking that it was the power I was looking for, I succumbed to my hunger, my desires, which I never regretted. Instead, I looked at it from a different view. Suffering is what honed me to be the being capable of truly becoming this world's abominable symbol of fear—Yamata no Orochi."

"You are crazy. So full of yourself that you are blinded by your own perception. You are no god. Not a lord. Orochi, you are nothing but a mere mortal."

"Don't you dare call me a mortal! I am what defies the power brought by life, proving it by slaughtering each one of you who defies my power, thrn I will leave this dungeon that kept me bound for so long, and return to the empire that empowered me to be a man of war, destruction, and chaos." Orochi's heads grew horns, and above each of his heads, the same orbs his human form once had materialized. "I shall extend my deepest gratitude to your Shogunate for the past half century, I have learned so much from you, but now, before I leave, I must take something from the strongest Samurai of this age, Ishikawa Takeo." He rushed towards Takeo like landslide, flattening everything beneath him as he slithers over. "Let me have your power as my ninth, Ishikawa!"

***

At the Entrance of the City, the battle between the faithful followers of Orochi and the remaining Venoms against the Council of Susanoo continues.

"You and the Council have once taken the country down, we shall not allow that to happen again!" Togemori's sickles swung side by side before landing slashes on his foe. "I have taken so little yet your body is already failing you, correct?"

"Take the country down? All I remember is my Tachi slashing you down seven years ago." She swung her long katana but a knee landed on her core, pushing her down on her knees.

"Is this what you have been preparing for? Huh, Council of Susanoo?! You never learned." Togemori raised Rin, holding her by the throat. Her weapon drops flat on the ground as she reaches for the hand strangling her. "Where is your courage gone, Ravenclaw Hunter? Does my venom already having effect on you? Pity." He begins to caress her face with the blade of his sickle. "Is there someone here that could save–"

A figure appeared right before the Venom. Towering, with a sharp, piercing gaze, a smile that could even take a life, he inherited from the blood of the Mountain Deities. Togemori felt it. His feet seemed to have sealed frozen in place by a force only he could feel. But before he could turn to face it, a fist landed right on his rib, sending him crashing towards the crowd.