NOVEL NEXT Chapter 17: The Dying Samurai
The battlefield smelled like shit and blood—mostly shit.
I'd watched humans die for nine centuries, and they always crapped themselves at the end. No matter how pretty the songs made it sound, death was messy and gross. The poets never mentioned the shit part.
From my formless spot—I was floating—I watched today's mess. The Ōnin War, they'd call it later. Brothers killing brothers over who got the Emperor's blessing. Yoshimasa hiding in his fancy pavilion while Kyoto burned. Civilization's whole show falling apart.
This is boring.
As I drifted through the field, I could feel life all around me, blooming and withering at the same time. Each moment had its own flavor if you paid attention—fear was sharp and sour, while anger carried a fiery spice that oddly tasted a little sweet. By the time the sun had set and risen again, three thousand men had met their end, and I had soaked it all in. Still, there was no spark among them. Their thoughts looped: pleas to gods who didn't care, calling out names of wives who'd never hear them, grieving for mothers who weren't coming. The sad repetition of human life—on repeat until even death lost its edge.
The sun was falling, turning everything red. Vultures circled, patient as always. Corpse scavengers would come soon, stealing anything valuable. Then monks, if any temples still stood, to collect heads for proper burial.
It had been like this for centuries.
I was about to leave—maybe check that volcano in the south; lava at least has personality—when I tasted something different.
A pure, focused hatred.
In nine hundred years of watching human deaths, I'd never felt anything like it. No fear, no regret. No pleading. Just a concentrated, beautiful rage aimed at being alive at all.
I narrowed my awareness and zeroed in.
He lay in a bomb crater, half-submerged in muddy water stained pink with blood. Gut wound—bad. Decent armor but not exceptional. Middle-ranking samurai, one of thousands who thought this war would make him rich.
But his thoughts...
'Fuck them all. Fuck Lord Yamana for sending me here. Fuck Lord Hosokawa for being there. Fuck my horse for dying. Fuck my ancestors for expecting me to care about their honor. Fuck the Buddha for making suffering seem noble. Fuck the gods for not saying anything. Fuck every poet who'll make this shit sound glorious.'
I'd heard dying men curse before. This was different. This wasn't the rage of someone who wanted to live. It was the anger of someone who'd finally realized life was a joke.
I made myself known—not visible to his naked eye, that would take work—just present enough that he felt me.
"You're dying badly."
His eyes snapped open—brown and bloodshot, a face that suggested he'd smiled a lot before. His hand went to his sword, though we both knew he couldn't lift it.
"Who's there?" His voice was rough; he'd probably screamed for help earlier.
"Does it matter? You'll be dead within the hour."
He laughed, coughed blood on his chin, and laughed again. "I think I'm hallucinating. Great. Now I'm seeing things before I die."
"I'm real."
"A ghost? Not very scary, then."
"No. Not a ghost. An observer."
"Most beg for salvation."
"For what? Salvation from who? You? Are you death? Because if so, you're late."
"Death has a purpose. I'm just—an observer."
He tried to focus where my voice came from, then gave up. "Watching. Must be nice."
"It was. For the first few centuries."
"And now?"
"Now I'm bored."
Kurō shifted, a fresh tear of pain. "Bored. An eternal being is bored and amused by me dying in the mud. The gods have a shit sense of humor."
"The gods have nothing to do with this. This is all humans—killing each other for territory, greed, satisfaction."
"You're not human." Not a question.
"No."
"Demon?"
"Older. Much older."
"And you're talking to me because..."
"You're the first interesting thing I've seen today."
Kurō's gaze found the sunset. "I'm dying badly in a pointless war after my lord left me to cover his retreat. What's interesting about that?"
I condensed, enough that the air shimmered where I hovered. "What if I offered you something else?"
"Instead of death?"
"Instead of dying as Horikoshi Kurō, forgotten samurai in a worthless war."
His eyes sharpened. "What's the catch? There's always a catch."
"The catch is you cease to exist. Completely."
"Just... dead?"
"Gone. The thing that is Horikoshi Kurō ends, and something else wears his shape."
"And you'll do... what? With my body?"
"Whatever I want."
"Will you avenge me? Kill Lord Yamana?"
"If it seems interesting."
"That's it? No grand purpose? No saving the world?"
"Purpose is your problem, not mine."
He closed his eyes. I thought perhaps he'd died, but his thoughts lingered. When he opened them again, something had settled into his face.
"Do you know what's funny?"
"Tell me."
"I trained for twenty years. Learned three ways of swordfighting. Memorized the code. All to die abandoned in mud." He coughed, blood. "Now some—thing—wants to wear my failed life like a fancy kimono. My ancestors would be horrified."
"Does that bother you?"
"I'm amused." He tried to reach for his sword and failed. "Take it. Take this shitty body and this shitty life. But do me one favor."
"Which is?"
"When you walk away, don't look back. Whatever you do with my body, walk forward. I'm so tired of looking back."
It wasn't a hard price—I'd no plans to dwell on his past—but the request had a small grace.
"Deal."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
What indeed. I'd decided the moment I tasted his hatred. But taking form—becoming human—was permanent in ways I didn't fully understand.
I poured myself into him.
Pain came first. The gut wound gored intestines, liver rent, internal bleeding that should have killed him long before. Only pure hatred had kept him breathing.
Cold followed. Muddy water, night air, blood loss—the body shivered as if the chill could be wrung out of it.
Then the weight of flesh: muscle, bone, organs, slack and heavy under gravity. Breathing became a necessity. Heartbeat a constant metronome. The body demanded a thousand small maintenance actions I had never performed.
Fascinating.
Kurō lingered in my new mind as a fading echo. *It's yours now. Try not to die right away.*
Then he was gone. Horikoshi Kurō ended, and I was alone in his flesh.
Standing took three tries. The gut wound closed at my will—flesh knitting, blood pulling back into veins. The body rebuilt itself: Kurō's basic shape, improved.
When I finally steadied, the sun had set.
The smell hit hard: shit and blood, but also grass, mud, night air, and something cooking in a distant camp. My stomach—this stomach—clenched with hunger. When did Kurō last eaten?
I looked down. Average height, thin from hunger, hands rough from a sword, scars like a map. The armor was usable, though blood-smeared. The blade: nothing special, decent balance, handle worn to fit those hands.
I tested a basic sword pattern. The muscles remembered even if the mind did not. Fascinating—the flesh held memory separate from consciousness.
"Who's there?"