Devouring the Demon King's Mana

Chapter 8

For a long moment Ren stood with the creature's breath on his ear and tried to decide which lie would be the least bad one.

"I'm a late bloomer," he said. "That's all it is. My mana came in all at once. The examiners said it happens."

"They said it happens at twelve." Mio did not raise her voice. "Try again."

Behind him, something wet clicked, and he realized it was the creature's jaw settling into a new position. A hand came down on his shoulder. It had five long, jointed fingers, each as thick as a tool handle, and the weight of it pushed him a full inch lower in his boots.

"I got lucky on the retake," Ren said.

"That was a worse one." Mio set her book on a dusty bench without looking at it. "I should explain what you're dealing with, since you seem to think I'm bluffing. I cannot hear your heartbeat. But I can feel what a lie does to you. Your fear jumps. A small lie gives a small jump, and that last one was bigger. I can keep counting all afternoon, and he will keep standing there."

"Please tell it to move its hand."

"No." She said it without any cruelty, the way you decline a second helping. "Talk."

Ren shut his eyes. There was nothing left to hold onto, and some of him, he realized, was relieved.

"There was a body on the shore," he said. "The day I failed the first test. An old man, barely breathing, washed up on the sand. He had a red mana core in his mouth, and it was still alive. I swallowed it."

Mio did not move. "Why?"

"Because I'd just been told I would never be a sorcerer. Because Daichi had spat in my face in front of the whole district, and I was sixteen and nobody was ever going to want me. I wanted to be strong." He opened his eyes. "That's the whole reason. It wasn't a good one."

"Go on."

"There was a voice in my head afterward. It's been there ever since. It's the reason I passed the retake. I didn't do that. It did."

"Whose voice?"

Ren hesitated. She had warned him herself, at lunch, never to say the name near Itsuki, and he had thought she was only protecting a friend. Now he understood she had been protecting something larger.

"Shuten," he said.

The practice room held its breath. The shaft of light hung in the dust, and the creature behind him did nothing at all. It did not stiffen, or lean away, or make a sound. Mio stood perfectly still, and the scar through her eyebrow went white.

"Say it again," she whispered. "Louder."

"Shuten."

Nothing happened. The creature's hand stayed where it was.

"Does he know I'm here?" Mio asked, and her voice had gone very thin.

"I don't know." Ren pressed a hand to his chest, as though he could feel through the ribs. "He doesn't talk to me anymore. He used to, but not since the elders' hall. It's been quiet for days. I can't tell if he's listening."

He reached inward, carefully, the way you test the weight of a floor, and found the same thing he had been finding for days. There was no flare of attention, no cold turn of interest, nothing at all. The quiet where Shuten lived did not change when his own name was spoken. It felt like standing in a kitchen while someone in the next room carried on with their evening.

"He isn't listening," Ren said. "I don't think he would care if he were."

Mio breathed out. It shook on the way.

"That creature isn't afraid of him," Ren said, nodding at the shape behind his shoulder. "It didn't even move."

"It wouldn't. That's the point of it." She walked a few steps toward him, and her voice settled back into something precise and cool, the voice of a girl reciting a lesson she had learned too young. "It's called a kagemori. Shadow guard. The kind of sorcery I do is called Kagetsukai, which sounds grander than it is. I work with negative energy. Fear, anger, grief, poison, everything the instructors tell you to keep inside. I can feel it, I can bend it, and if there's enough of it, I can give it a body."

"A body," Ren repeated.

"A real one. Not a puppet, not an illusion, not a puff of smoke. Hide, bone, weight." She raised two fingers, and the hand on Ren's shoulder lifted away. The creature walked past him on joints that should have creaked and did not, and crossed the room to a wooden training post set in the floor. It closed one hand around the post, and the wood snapped at the root. It set the broken half carefully on the ground and returned to stand beside her, its blank face turned toward Ren.

"Strength is whatever I put into it," Mio said. "This one is about a bear's worth, because all I had this morning was a classroom full of nervous first-years. It also feeds. A kagemori eats negative energy out of the air. Fear, anger, poison, anything. Put one in a room of frightened people and it gets stronger every minute. Put one in a kegare pen and it would eat the pen."

"That sounds awful."

"It is useful." She turned her palm over. "It tracks. Give it the feel of a person's fear and it will find them in the dark. It heals itself off what it eats. And it carries the feeling it was made from. This one is jumpy and hungry because it's made of nerves. One made from rage would be a very different animal."

"Can you take it back?"

"At any time. The energy returns to me." Something tightened at the corner of her mouth. "That's the part that hurts."

Ren looked at the thing standing at her side. It was taller than the doorframe and it stooped to fit under the beams. "Why doesn't it care about him? Shuten. Everyone at this school is afraid of that name."

"It has no fear, and it has no loyalty except to me. It doesn't take orders from you or from anyone else. You can't bargain with it, you can't frighten it, and it does not care whose power you are carrying." Mio met his eyes. "If Shuten himself walked out of you and stood in this room, it would still take his head off if I told it to."

The room seemed to grow colder.

"So understand me," she said. "I'm not asking politely. If your eyes go red, if I feel him come up, if you so much as turn your head toward the people in that classroom, then it takes yours. It doesn't need a speech. It needs one word. I could have your head right now, Hoshino, and nobody in this academy would ask me why."

"I understand," Ren said, and he did.

"Good." She looked away. A muscle jumped in her jaw. "There's one more thing, and I need you to hear it clearly. Your output is immense."

"My what?"

"Your negative energy. It pours off you. When I walked past you in the corridor on the first day, I thought someone had opened a kegare pen. Right now, standing there, you're giving off more than a whole row of them." She flexed her fingers, and Ren saw they were trembling. "I'm trying very hard not to reach out and take a handful of it, because I know what it would make. It would make this one look like a toy. I've been fighting that since the first morning. That is why I've been staring at you. I'm not trying to threaten you. I'm trying not to touch."

Ren swallowed. He had imagined a lot of reasons for the look on her face. This was not one of them.

"Why haven't you told Yamabuki?" he asked.

"Because the academy already knows, doesn't it?" Her gaze came back to him. "Somebody let a boy with that in him walk through the front gate. That isn't an accident, and I doubt it's a mercy."

"The elders know. And Kenzo Sakaguchi. They had me tied to a chair." Ren rubbed the back of his neck. "They said I could attend. They never said why."

"Kenzo," Mio said, and her eyebrow twitched. "Itsuki's brother."

"I figured that out."

"Then be careful what you say to Itsuki. I mean that. I told you at lunch how he reacts to the name, and I wasn't being dramatic. Don't be alone with him when he's upset." She picked up her book from the bench and held it against her chest. "I won't ask you about the terms. I don't want to know them. But I'll tell you what I've decided, because you deserve to know. I'm not reporting you. Not yet."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I can feel it when you lie, so don't lie to me again. About anything. You'll find that it isn't worth the trouble." She hesitated. "And if the day ever comes that I decide I was wrong about you, I will not warn you first."

"That's fair," Ren said.

"It isn't," said Mio. "But it's what there is."

She lowered her hand, and the creature did not move. "Go," she said. "It stays out until you're gone."

Ren crossed the room with his back to it, which was the hardest walk of his life. He felt each step on the floorboards, and the dust shifted around his boots, and when he reached the door he turned his head once.

Mio had sat down in the dust with her book dropped beside her and her palms pressed flat against the floor. She was shaking all over. Behind her, the creature stood with its eyeless head turned toward him, and it tracked him the whole way to the threshold without so much as a twitch.

Ren stepped into the corridor and shut the door. He leaned against the wall and pressed his hand to his chest, as he had a dozen times that week, and waited.

Nothing turned toward him. Nothing turned away.