Still Stone Testament

Caravan guard. He always returned to the familiar. Maybe it was just the nature of the Nio, but he found the consistency comforting. And after that humbling he’d received back home…well, perhaps the nature of caravans to cross great distances, even oceans, was part of it too. This land was new, at least to him. With strange peoples and strange customs. But familiar dangers. Akuma haunted these foreign lands just like Kirara, monsters attacked farmers, and bandits preyed on the unprotected. 

“Mashro! Are they still coming?”

He winced at the butchering of his name. The cat woman (he’d thought her a nekomata at first!) still couldn’t pronounce it correctly. How hard was Masahiro to say?

“They still come,” he called back. “Continue to the fort, I will hold them here.”

He met the woman’s eyes, noted how her tail flicked in agitation. Then with a sigh, she shook her head. “I’m not paying you if you die on me!”

“I will meet you. Go. Quickly.”

She started shouting and spurring the beasts pulling the wagons faster. Masahiro nodded and turned back toward the pass opening. It had been a sanctioned exploratory expedition to the north of these lands, into what they called the ‘Astra’. Akuma had found them and they had been retreating south from them for nearly a week but the monsters were dogged and did not tire while they had needed to rest their beasts at the northern base of the pass. He placed himself at the peak of the pass, staring down at the twisted lands beyond and the akuma rushing up the slope. They slowed when they saw him approaching more cautiously, obviously looking out for some form of ambush.

There were four of them and they were like a madman had mixed the most dangerous parts of a wild boar and a great wolf into one creature. Bristing fur, tusks, sleek and powerful bodies, and standing nearly as tall as he was. He stretched out his senses as the beasts rushed toward him. Bakemono, at least. This many were dangerous but…well, he was eager to see how well his training in the years since he left home had served him.

Masahiro uncrossed his arms and brought one foot down in an impact that seemed to rattle the mountains. He was the unassailable peak, the immovable boulder. He was the stone that refused the river and made IT bend. When they reached him, their teeth and claws skidded across granite skin and they could not withstand the steady crushing of the mountain.

It didn’t take as long as he’d thought. He had some new scratches that would heal over the next week and a new story to tell. With a smirk, he began to walk down the mountain toward his charges. He turned his gaze up to the sky as he walked and idly wondered if that swift kitsune was also training hard back home. He’d like a rematch the next time he saw her.