The Kindling [Private]

“Did you hear? Some village near Mount Hakobe has apparently been destroyed, with no survivors. All that was left were ruins.”

Kenzo’s eyes opened as he heard that passing comment. Spoken by one civilian woman to another as they walked through the park, the simple statement chilled the Demon Slayer to his bones. A village destroyed with no survivors… It sounded almost exactly what happened to his village when he was just a boy. When Almoth, the Flame Demon, came down on his home and had scooped him, the only survivor, out of the smoldering wreckage. If another village had been demolished… It could mean another demon is on a rampage.

The Demon Slayer rose to his feet, brushing leaves from his uniform coat. He’d been relaxing in a park in Rose Garden, but now his thoughts were set on only one thing. To travel to Mount Hakobe, find the destroyed settlement, and investigate. If there was a demon on the loose… he was one of the only few people who could stop it. He considered going back to Amber Island and asking JJ, one of his guildmates and a fellow Demon Slayer, to accompany him, but discarded the thought almost as quickly as he’d had it. It would take far too long. He had to go now.

So he left Rose Garden, embarking on a train to Magnolia, the closest town to the mountain. He sat alone in his seat, staring silently out the window at the passing scenery, using the peacefulness to quell the fury bubbling inside him. There would be time to unleash it later, when he was fighting the demon, or whatever else had destroyed the village. It was a long train ride, but he spent it in silence and solitude, not even accepting a drink from the attendant who regularly passed through.

Once in Magnolia Town, Kenzo trod carefully through the beautiful town. Despite its splendor and festive nature, it was home to the dangerous wizards of Fairy Tail, those who scorned the oversight of the Magic Council and were rumored to even take assassination contracts. While not precisely evil, they weren’t exactly good, either, and Kenzo didn’t have the time to tangle with them at the moment.

Outside the limits of Magnolia, the Demon Slayer paused a moment, beholding the towering might of Mount Hakobe in the distance. But only a moment. He had a long way to go yet, and night was falling.

Even after the sun had set, he kept walking, summoning a torch of pure white flame to light his way, and to discourage any monsters or bandits from accosting him. He could rest when his job was done.

At dawn, he found himself at his goal. The ruins of a small settlement at the foot of Mount Hakobe. If it had had a name, no one survived who knew it. In some ways, the village reminded him of that awful day, looking over his kidnapper’s shoulder at what had once been his home. Crushed and broken houses, bodies laying in the streets, charred wreckage everywhere… Except, in some ways, this was different. First, there were no bodies. Either someone had already come through and buried the inhabitants, or… a worse thought, no one had died here. Second, there were no char marks, no ash. No evidence of fire magic at work.

Kenzo moved carefully through the ruined village, holding his magic at the ready. The empty silence, the empty houses, the empty streets… it spooked him. Something dark was afoot, that was certain. Any time he came across a mostly intact house or building, he peeked into it, but found nothing. No bodies, no burn marks. In one that had somehow stayed almost undamaged, he found a table set as for dinner, with no one there to eat it. Plates and food set out just so, everything in its place, but no one had served the meal. It lay rotten in the serving dishes, surrounded by buzzing flies. Kenzo barely avoided retching and left the house hurriedly.

He spent hours fruitlessly searching the village, finding nothing until he came across the road leading out of the village, towards the mountain. There he found footprints sunk into the dirt, footprints unlike any he’d ever seen. Vaguely reptilian, with an elongated triangular shape and distinct claw marks, one at the back and three at the front. Like a bird, but… warped. The sides weren’t even, and the holes the claws had made had different depths. Not to mention the size, which was three times as large as a human’s. Something twisted, malformed, unnatural had made this. A demon had been here.

Quickly, without even a conscious thought on his part, a sword of white metal appeared in his hands, wreathed in sacred white flame. He barely restrained himself from lashing out at the nearby buildings, a dark fury stirring in his breast. Instead he took a deep breath, forcing the rage out and extinguishing the fire around his sword blade. He left the weapon where it was, for now. It may prove useful in the coming hours.

The Demon Slayer set out on the path, following the demon’s trail. It led towards the mountain, and eventually onto a path up the mountain itself. The air got progressively colder the higher he went, eventually into freezing temperatures, snow and ice crunching under his feet, but he didn’t feel it. The fire inside him kept him warm. Eventually, snow began falling from the sky, the temperature plummeting past freezing, but he kept trudging onwards. The tracks were still clear, for now, but were getting progressively fuzzier as the falling snow filled them in. He was worried he would lose the trail entirely.

Several hours later, he did. The last footprint was barely an imprint in the snow, and after that, there was only smooth whiteness. The Demon Slayer halted, panting, his breath forming clouds in front of his face. Frustration stoked the fire inside him, until he was in the center of an expanding circle of melted snow. Even the falling snow melted a few feet before it reached him. When the snow had cleared from the ground, he saw his salvation. The demon’s claws had sunk deep enough in the snow to score the stone and scree below, leaving clear marks. He lifted his hand and conjured a flame, pouring all his negative emotions, a lifetime of simmering anger and hate and resentment, into the white fire until it burned hot enough to melt the snow around him for ten feet. Then he continued his trek, following the claw marks in the mountainside.

At last, he reached his goal. A cave close to the top of the mountain sat at the end of the demon’s trail. Visibility was poor here, a mass of whirling snow and misty fog. But Kenzo could see the massive wall of sheer ice blocking the entrance to the cave. It could only be the work of an ice demon, which explained the lack of burned wreckage back at the village. The Demon Slayer paced up to the ice wall and peered through it. Behind was only blackness, but the flame in his hand cast enough light that he could see some detail. It was rocky and rough, filled with stalactites and stalagmites. All too similar to the cave that had been his home for six years. He could also tell that the ice plug was several feet thick, at least, and formed of interwoven layers of ice to make it strong. It would probably withstand any blunt force thrown against it, like a castle wall. So Kenzo cheated.

Placing the tip of his sword against the ice, he focused all of his rage and pain and hatred into the smallest point he could manage, heating the sword tip well past the melting point of steel. Fortunately for his efforts, his sword was made out of something better than steel, something only he could make. A holy metal designed to kill demons. Combined with his sacred flames, it easily sank into the demon’s work, unraveling the intertwined layers and melting the wall.

After several minutes of this, Kenzo’s frustrations hit a fever pitch, and his control lapsed. A veritable firestorm sprang to existence around him, spawned by his emotions. White fire lashed out in all directions, melting ice and snow from the ground and sky alike. Snarling, Kenzo withdrew his sword and began striking at the ice wall, the blade of holy metal scoring deep trenches. At the peak of his fury that this demonic creation should defy him, Kenzo summoned a warhammer wreathed in flame and slammed it with all his might into the center of the wall. Directly into the weak point he’d created, boring through the ice with his sword, and further weakened with his furious slashes. The wall shattered with a tremendous crash, and the Demon Slayer was forced to create a metal shield over him to protect him from the falling chunks of ice.

When the ice ceased falling, Kenzo dismissed the shield and hammer, resummoning his sword as he gazed at the great, dark hole in front of him. His rage spent, all that was left was trepidation. What would he find within? His fight with Almoth had nearly ended with him as the slain, rather than the demon. It had taken all his strength to defeat his mentor. He was stronger now, by far, and better equipped, but what if the ice demon was stronger than Almoth? Worse, what if there was nothing in the cave? What if he was too late?

With a deep inhale to banish the worst of his fears, Kenzo once again conjured a flame in his hand to serve as a torch, keeping his sword ready in the other, and ventured into the cave. The first several meters revealed nothing. But further in, out of sight of the entrance, he found what he’d feared most. Scores of people, frozen in ice and posed like statues. A young man, face locked in a terrified howl, stood with his right hand outstretched, palm up, his left resting on the pommel of a sword planted on the ground like some nobleman of old. An old maid lying on her side, draped in sheets of ice designed to resemble folds of cloth, her pose both relaxed and seductive like a goddess of ancient lore, despite her sagging body and fearful face. From there, the poses got more and more elaborate, often involving multiple people. The further in Kenzo went, the more depraved the ‘statues’ became. He saw things that turned his stomach, things that made him more furious than ever before. But the worst was when he passed the figure of a young woman, posed like something from an erotic painting, and she blinked at him. Fury quickly turned to horror. These people were somehow still alive, held in some sort of suspended animation by the ice. There was no doubt in his mind that these were the people from the ruined village.

Thoughts of freeing the townspeople from the ice that imprisoned them were interrupted by chuckles, low and high, that grated against Kenzo’s spine like nails on a chalkboard. They came from all around him, which made his stomach drop to the vicinity of his knees. There wasn’t just one demon. There were many.

“So, do you like our master’s work, human?” said one nasally voice from in front of him. “It took him many days to create this art.”

Kenzo took a hesitant step backwards, then firmed his resolve and strode forward, until the light of his torch revealed a goblin-like figure seated upon the back of another young woman on all fours, her back arched into a bench. The goblin smirked at him, playing with the woman’s frozen strands of hair, not caring when some of them snapped off.

“This one is his favorite. The village leader’s precious daughter, turned into a seat for my lord to sit on. It must be humbling for the old man to watch.” the demonling said, gesturing to the portly older man just to the left of the bench. “I keep my master’s throne warm for him while he’s gone, fetching more subjects for his art. And you, little human, must be one of those ‘Demon Slayers’ he spoke about once. Did you know he doesn’t fear you at all? No human could ever kill a demon like my master. He is too… pure.” The demonling gave Kenzo a nasty smile. “But that doesn’t mean we will let you even get close to him. This, little human, will be where you die. If you’re lucky, your body will be turned into a footstool for my Lord Thorath.” With a snap of its fingers, demonlings by the dozens leapt from the shadows behind the statues, armed with weapons of ice and intent upon killing Kenzo.

Instead, they met death themselves. The Demon Slayer couldn’t risk using fire in this enclosed space, with civilians on all sides, so he used metal instead. His flesh transmuted into white metal, like a living statue, he whirled like a dervish, swords of superheated metal in each hand carving through the imps like the blades of a blender. Their weapons shattered uselessly against his metal skin whenever they did make it through.

When the flood of imps subsided, Kenzo stopped and faced the seated imp, carnage on all sides, blood staining the white of his guild uniform and rolling off his skin. The last living demonling stared at him in astonishment and fear.

“You… Impossible… You cannot be....” it stammered. Whatever Kenzo could not be, he never found out, as his sword neatly removed the imp’s head, like flicking the head off a daisy. It rolled to a stop at the feet of the village headman, frozen in a prison of ice. The Demon Slayer gazed at the mess he’d made for several moments, then set about freeing the village people from the ice, beginning with the headman’s daughter.

It was a long and arduous task, but worth it. Many of them fell at his feet, weeping, thanking him profusely. Most made it through with only minor frostbite, which his sacred, healing flames soothed away. After they saw this, they began to whisper amongst themselves, calling him the ‘Flame Exorcist’. He let them. Perhaps when this day was over, his reputation would spread, and the demon Thorath would begin to fear him, as he should.

Once all the villagers were freed, he led them out of the cave, pausing before they trekked down the mountain. Channeling his rage, he funneled a storm of fire and shards of super-heated metal into the cave, melting the rock and causing the whole tunnel to cave in. In front of the collapsed entrance, he mounted the head of the demonling who had spoken to him on a spear of white metal, the haft driven into the stone. A message for the demon. “I’m coming for you, Thorath.” he whispered. He then turned and led the people down the mountain, conjuring flames around them to keep them warm, until they reached the destroyed village.

Leaving them there to restart their lives, Kenzo began his journey back to Amber Island, ignoring the village headman’s offers of riches and gifts. Especially ignoring the headman’s daughter’s offer.

He had hunting to do.