To my horror, Kai started forward, a blank look in her eyes.
“That’s right,” crooned the thing that had taken Yakuna’s body as its own, “come to me. Come over here and retrieve your friend.”
Cara and I grabbed Kai and pulled her back, but she continued to try to move forward, as if being drawn by something stronger than herself.
Kai was very strong, and I had the sudden realization that whatever was controlling her did not care about her body. It would keep her moving even through physical pain. I was not going to be able to restrain her without hurting her.
I heard the creature chuckling and gloating from its seat, “Come to me, come to me, that’s right, come here...”
“We have to do something!” Cara said. The gap between us and the creature was closing relentlessly.
A thought struck me, and I reached out and grabbed Cara’s hand. “The Personas! Combine the Persona power, the way we did to close the crack during the battle at Toshiro’s house. We can use that power to drive out the Festering’s control over Kai.”
Cara obeyed immediately, grabbing at my hand and flinging her awareness of the Personas toward me as I did the same toward her. Our awareness combined in a flash of enormous power, and we both instinctively hugged Kai’s body between us. Cara placed her free hand on Kai’s forehead, and I felt her push the Persona’s power into her.
With a snap like a breaking cord, we felt the influence of the Festering break and retreat. Blue light, clean and beautiful in that horrible bleak place, shone out from Kai’s body.
For one incredible moment, the three of us were together, hanging suspended together in the spirit realm, grasping each other close. It was a powerful and intimate feeling, a feeling almost like joining completely. Black shadows fled in terror from Kai’s body at the approach of the blue light.
Then it passed, and Kai was on her knees in the dust, panting and clutching her drawn sword. Cara and I stood. Cara was a little shaky.
“What... what was that? What happened?” Kai gasped, looking up at both of us.
“That was the influence of the Festering,” I said, keeping a wary eye on the creature which leered and chattered to itself in Yakuna’s body. “It tried to take control of you through your emotions, just as it did through Toshiro.”
“What did you do?”
“We drove it out with the combined power of the Personas.”
“So that was what that feeling was. That felt... good.” She seemed almost embarrassed. It had been a very intimate moment. Just now, however, I needed to concentrate on my enemy.
“Well, my friends,” Yakuna said in his madman’s voice. “You have come here to visit me, but I have no need of new friends. I have plenty of company, as you can see.” He swung his head to and fro, as if indicating the piles of rusty armor and desiccated skeletons which lay all about. “Many friends, plenty of company. And if you won’t join me of your own accord, then I’ll just have to ask my friends to bring you to me instead!”
With a terrible suddenness, the figure of Yakuna leaped up into the air and turned, landing on all fours like an animal, his fingers and toes gripping the squared edges of the stone block. His horrible flat face was turned to us, then his mouth opened and the roar of the Festering filled the flat hilltop.
Kai had recovered quickly from her ordeal. She got to her feet and drew herself up to her full height, flanking me and facing the monstrosity on the block with her sword raised. Cara fitted an arrow to her bow, and I reached for the kusarigama, the sickle-bladed weapons that went with the shinobi outfit I was wearing. Toshiro had reluctantly drawn his sword.
I stood in the center of my little group, watching the creature warily.
“Stay close,” I said. “Don’t attack it just yet. It wants us to approach. Let’s wait and see what...”
There was a clanking, rattling noise, the screech of rusty metal on metal and a dry groaning sound. We glanced around, confused. In the cage, dangling from the scaffold, the Tengu woman was crouching, her back straight, looking down on the scene. She had woken from her slumber and discarded the rags that had covered her. Her elegant, long-fingered hands clutched the bars of her prison. I looked up, but except for a glint of eyes, I couldn’t see her face because of the shade cast by her hood.
“Where’s that sound coming from?” Cara asked.
“And what is it?” Toshiro added.
My weapons were in my hands, but instinct told me I might be needing the armor of my Ironside Persona soon too. I glanced around.
“There!” I said suddenly, pointing. “Look there!”
It was the suits of armor.
The rusty suits of ancient samurai armor were rising, jerking up into standing postures as if they were filled with living men again, but they were not.
“It’s the skeletons! He’s raised the skeletons!” Cara’s frightened cry was true. Empty eye sockets stared from the shadow of helmets, and bony, gauntleted hands groped at the air as all the armored skeletons were wrenched back to a horrible mockery of life.
That was where the clanking sound was coming from; it was the noise of many rusty armor plates grinding against each other. They rose up out of the dust like the spectral ghosts of ancient warriors, before they shambled toward us.
“They’re everywhere!” Kai cried.
She was right. As the corrupted Yakuna monster leaned back on his central stone block and howled with laughter, the entire landscape erupted with rusty figures.
Chapter Eighteen
Yakuna remained seated in the middle of the courtyard while the armored undead
