The Legend of Kitaku [short story]
There was once a village called Kitaku. It has disappeared since then, swallowed up by the world as small villages tend to be, but there was a time when it was the only little town for miles and miles. Kitaku was a quiet and peaceful place, without much excitement, but its people were not the type to crave excitement anyway. Life was good, and they were happy enough.
As we all know, of course, such contented little hamlets are ripe for disaster. In this case, disaster took the form of a demon called Goriyo. He was as tall as three houses stacked on top of each other, with arms like tree trunks and a wide mouth full of razor-sharp fangs. When Goriyo walked, the ground shook like there was an earthquake. His skin was pure black, like someone had painted him up with tar.
Now, all that doesn’t necessarily make someone a demon, and it’s important not to judge people by appearances. Goriyo wasn’t evil because he was tall or scary-looking; he was evil because he ate people. He was quite good at it, too, and could swipe grown men off their feet and chomp them down as easily as you or I might eat an egg roll. He was a mean, nasty old demon, was Goriyo, and Kitaku was where he’d decided to go hunting.
If Goriyo was a dumber demon, this would be a very short story: he would have just waltzed into Kitaku and eaten everybody, and this story would end on a very sour note. But Goriyo was smart, and he knew that if he just up and ate everyone, he’d have to spend weeks looking for another village to devour. (That, and binging on greasy human villagers tended to give him the runs.) So when Goriyo first came to Kitaku, sending villagers screaming and locking their doors, he didn’t eat everyone; he simply grabbed up a few villagers, chewed them up, and walked away to go sleep off his meal in the forest.
At first, the villagers thought Goriyo was gone for good, until he came back out of the forest the next day and swept up the village innkeeper, gobbling him down like a tasty snack before heading back into the forest. As the days passed, this kept up: Goriyo would emerge out of the woods like a nightmare, grab someone and eat them, and then leave. The villagers of Kitaku were terrified of the demon, understandably so, and wondered how they might be rid of him. “We should call Lord Shaijo!” said Daisuke, the village blacksmith. “He’ll know what to do!”
“I’ll make for the capital city at once!” said Goro, the town crier. “I’ll tell Lord Shaijo to send his greatest warriors to help us!”
“Applesauce!” said Moe, the town drunk. He was ignored.
Lord Shaijo was not a particularly unkind ruler, so he agreed to send one of his greatest warriors to fight the demon: Omuro Two-Hands, a valiant fighter whose skill with a sword was legendary. Omuro traveled for many days to get to Kitaku, and when he arrived the people greeted him with cheers of joy and tears of relief. At last, they said to each other, a brave hero has come to slay the demon that has been plaguing us! Omuro promised the villagers that he would come back with the demon’s head or not at all, and went off into the forest in search of Goriyo.
The forest outside Kitaku was a dark and treacherous place, but Omuro was not afraid, for he was a seasoned soldier and so the darkness held no terror for him. With his blade in hand he made his way to the center of the forest, where Goriyo slumbered peacefully. To kill a sleeping enemy, even a murderous demon, was dishonorable, and so Omuro announced his presence to Goriyo with a mighty cry. “Awaken, demon, and face me! I am Omuro Two-Hands, and I come in the name of Lord Shaijo to demand vengeance for the people of Kitaku! Awaken, and face me!”
And awaken Goriyo did. He stood, stretching his long, long arms and yawning to reveal his mouth full of huge, dagger-like fangs. It occurred to Omuro for the first time that perhaps honor was not all it was cracked up to be, and that perhaps he should have killed the demon while it slept. But as the time for that was over, he steeled his blade and readied himself for a fight.
Goriyo had had an easy time of killing human villagers, but he was a demon, and this was not the first time he had fought a human champion. He swiped at Omuro with his razor-sharp claws, but Omuro only blocked his attack with a swing of his mighty sword. He slashed at the demon and opened a cut on Goriyo’s flank, and the demon howled in pain. Omuro was cocky, then, and assumed the fight had already been won. He allowed the demon to retreat further back into the clearing, readying himself for the demon’s counterattack.
Goriyo was terribly strong, and he wrenched a huge tree out of the ground without any effort and threw it at Omuro, hoping to crush the tiny human with its weight. Omuro’s sword was pure sharp steel, however, and carved the tree in half before it could hit him. So Goriyo tried again, this time with a boulder he plucked out of the ground like a pebble. Omuro’s sword had been blessed by the gods, however, and it carved through the stone like butter.
But as mentioned previously, Goriyo was not a stupid demon, and he learned from his mistakes. The next thing he reached for was made of neither stone nor wood, but wax. It was a beehive, and Goriyo threw it at Omuro just as he had thrown the tree and the boulder. Omuro sliced the beehive in half effortlessly, but it was not until he heard the angry buzzing that he realized what he had done.
The bees swarmed him in an angry cloud, and he swung his sword at them to drive them away. A sword of blessed pure steel wasn’t really any more effective at cutting a cloud of tiny bees than a simple stick, however, and the bees continued to sting and harass him. By the time Omuro saw Goriyo’s claws coming for his neck, it was already too late.
When the villagers of Kitaku heard the rustling of the trees near the forest’s entrance, they naturally assumed that it was Omuro, returning in victory with the demon’s head slung over his shoulder. They were understandably very upset to find that it was, in fact, the reverse, particularly when Goriyo snatched up the village butcher and ate him as well. The villagers ran back to their houses and boarded up the doors until Goriyo was gone, resolving to ask their lord for help a second time.
“This is terrible!” said Takuya, the tailor.
“Yes, this is extremely terrible,” said Yoko, the butcher’s wife, who had taken a sizable life insurance policy out on her husband. “So terrible. Woe is me. I am in such grief right now.”
“Stifle your mourning for now, good woman,” said Goro, the town crier. “No more will die to this demon, I swear it. I will make for the capital again and inform Lord Shaijo of what has happened here. He will save us, I know it!”
“Ruggumfruggum!” said Moe, the town drunk. Once again, his contribution to the discussion was summarily dismissed.
Lord Shaijo was very angry when he heard of Omuro’s death at the demon’s hands, and so he called his court together to consult them for advice. Perhaps, said the court wizard Hotaru, where steel had failed to kill the demon, magic might suffice. Hotaru was an accomplished sorcerer who knew many powerful spells, and he was confident that his magic would be enough to take down the demon terrorizing Kitaku. Lord Shaijo agreed, and so Hotaru set out to succeed where Omuro Two-Hands had failed.
The people of Kitaku were overjoyed when he arrived, and assured him that he would be victorious, probably. Hotaru had heard what had befallen Omuro, and decided that the same would not happen to him. Rather than letting the demon use nature’s power against him, he would use it against the demon! To prepare for the fight, Hotaru selected his best transformation spell, and headed off into the forest with his staff in hand. The darkness of the forest held no fear for Hotaru, for with a wave of his hand he could conjure a flame to guide his way.
Once again, Goriyo was asleep in the clearing at the forest’s center. Not unlike Omuro, Hotaru’s pride would not allow him to slay the demon while it was asleep, and so he cleared his voice and shouted as loudly as he could. “Awaken, demon, and face me! I am Hotaru of the Flame, and I come in the name of Lord Shaijo to demand vengeance for the people of Kitaku, and for Omuro Two-Hands! Awaken, and face me!”
Awaken Goriyo did- thinking, perhaps, that Omuro’s murder had not taken, and the warrior was back for a second round. Upon seeing that it was only a frail man without even a blade, however, he laughed loudly. “Who is this they send to fight me?” the demon rumbled. “A man in a dress?”
“It’s a robe,” Hotaru cried indignantly, and launched a blast of flame at Goriyo. Being creatures of the supernatural, however, demons are resistant to magic, and the flame could not scorch Goriyo’s skin any blacker than it already was. Goriyo shrugged off the blast and sent magic of his own Hotaru’s way; foul magic that made the trees rot and the air burn dry.
Hotaru’s own magic faltered in the face of the mighty demon, and he knew that he would have to rely on the transformation spell he had prepared. With a wordless cry, Hotaru the sorcerer was gone: and in his place, a sleek black serpent coiled through the leaves and the undergrowth. For all his great strength, Goriyo possessed one weakness: his eyesight was not sharp, and he relied instead upon the smell of warm human blood to sense his prey. The demon could not see the snake slithering towards him, and assumed that the tiny human man had simply run away (as humans were known to do). Shrugging, Goriyo returned to his slumber, ignorant of the danger creeping toward him.
Hotaru had chosen his spell with care: the serpent he had transformed himself into was the deadly kuroshi viper, whose bite was so deadly that even demons feared it. Hotaru knew that the venom of the kuroshi would kill Goriyo in seconds, and all he had to do was get close enough to land a bite.
Unfortunately for Hotaru, he and Goriyo were not the only ones in the clearing that day. A hungry hawk, frustrated by the lack of prey out on the plains, had flown into the forest to rest before hunting again. The hawk had no fear of demons nor sorcerers, being capable of flying away before either of them could hurt it, and had watched the battle thus far with about as much interest as a hawk watches anything it can’t eat.
When Hotaru transformed, however, the hawk’s interest was caught, for although Goriyo did not notice the snake slithering through the leaves, the hawk very much did. It swooped down and swept Hotaru-the-snake up in its talons, pecking at his scales in hopes of a tasty reptilian meal. Hotaru naturally panicked and bit at the hawk, but the hawk’s talons were long and hard enough that his bite could do nothing. In his panic, Hotaru ended the spell, and the hawk was very frustrated to find that it was now holding a grown man in its claws instead of a delicious viper. The hawk, as most animals will do upon finding that they have mistakenly begun eating a human, immediately dropped him in disgust.
The falling sorcerer landed right atop Goriyo’s lap. The rest of Hotaru’s life was very brief, and very messy.
Once again, the people of Kitaku amassed at the entrance of the forest, content in the knowledge that Hotaru would soon be emerging from the trees with news of the demon’s death. One can scarcely imagine their disappointment when instead it was Goriyo who brought news of Hotaru’s death, in the form of the sorcerers' mangled body being thrown at them. Once again, Goriyo emerged out of the forest with his jaws dripping with blood, and once again he made off with a villager: this time, the village bartender.
“This is really starting to get out of hand,” said Daisuke, the village blacksmith.
“I agree.” said Yoko, the butcher’s wife, who had owed the bartender a sizable amount of credit. “Truly, this demon is a scourge upon our land.”
“Okay, so the sorcerer didn’t really work out.” admitted Goro, the town crier. “But as they say, the third time is the charm. I will tell Lord Shaijo what has happened here, and this time he will be sure to send someone who can help us!”
“Dysentery!” said Moe, the town drunk. (By this point, the other villagers were beginning to seriously consider feeding Moe to the demon.)
For the third time, Goro the town crier rode to the capital city, and he told Lord Shaijo what had become of his sorcerer. Lord Shaijo was understandably distraught to hear of Hotaru’s untimely death, for the wizard had owed him a sizable amount of credit. “That is more than enough,” said Lord Shaijo sternly. “I have had enough of this demon making a mockery of me. I will offer a reward of ten thousand gold coins to anyone who can kill the demon Goriyo for good and for all!”
The offer of a reward spread across the land, and soon caught the attention of an ambitious young man named Nobu. Nobu was a wanderer, a rogue, and all-around scoundrel who fancied himself the cleverest man in the land. He was a master wordsmith who made his money challenging travelers to games of riddles, and taking their coin when they inevitably failed to outwit him. Nobu had once heard a rumor in his favorite tavern: supposedly, if you could make a demon speak its name backwards, that demon would have no choice but to return to the underworld for a hundred years before it could resurface again. Confident in his ability to trick Goriyo into saying his own name backwards, Nobu packed his things and made his way to Kitaku, where the demon would be waiting.
By this point, the villagers of Kitaku were becoming somewhat wary of getting their hopes up about anyone actually managing to defeat Goriyo. Still, they offered Nobu as warm a welcome as they were able, and the boy’s quick wit endeared him to them. “Perhaps,” said Takuya, the tailor, “this boy may succeed where the other two failed. If what he says about the demon’s name is true, he need only trick him into saying it backwards. At last, this nightmare may come to an end!”
“Have no fear, old man.” said Nobu confidently. “Demons may be deadly, but they are notoriously easy to trick. Swords and spells are not what one needs to defeat them; one needs only the skill of one’s mind.” So sure he was in himself that Nobu’s good cheer spread to the villagers, and already they began making preparations for his victory feast.
The next morning, Nobu strode off into the forest, already rehearsing the trick he would use to fool the demon. The darkness of the forest held no fear for him, for he was a smart boy and knew that the demon would make its presence known before it ambushed him. Finally Nobu found Goriyo slumbering in the forest clearing. Unlike Omuro and Hotaru before him, Nobu held himself to no code of honor; however, he couldn’t very well trick the demon into saying his own name backwards while he slumbered. So Nobu cleared his throat and announced his presence: “Awaken, demon, and face me! I am Nobu the Trickster, and I come in the name of Lord Shaijo to demand vengeance for the people of Kitaku, as well as for Omuro Two-Hands and Hotaru of the Flame! Awaken, and face me!”
Awaken Goriyo did, for the third time looking down at the little man facing him. “Do the humans grow so desperate that they send a child to fight me?” Goriyo sneered. “I must remember to thank them for sending me such a tasty snack.”
“I have no intention of fighting you, Goriyo,” said Nobu, “for you would surely tear me to pieces. Rather, I come to challenge you to a game of wits.”
“A game of wits?” Goriyo echoed. “What foolishness. I should eat you here and now.”
“Do so if you wish,” said Nobu loftily, “but I know your fellow demons are watching from the underworld. Decline my challenge and they shall all know you for the dimwitted brute you are.”
“This is true,” Goriyo admitted. “Very well then. Outwit me, and I shall return to the underworld for a hundred years. Fail, however, and I shall sup the marrow from your bones.”
The hard part for Nobu was over: he had been slightly worried that Goriyo would simply decline his challenge and eat him. “The challenge is this,” he said. “I shall say a series of phrases. After each one, you must repeat it five times as quickly as you can. Go too slow, or stumble, and the victory goes to me. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Goriyo, smiling smugly, for he knew that the demon tongue is much more nimble than that of a man’s. “Speak your words, human.”
“Red leather, yellow leather.” said Nobu.
“Red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather.” The demon repeated the phrase without so much as a stumble, grinning widely to show his fangs.
Nobu tried not to let the fear show on his face. “Purple paper people.”
“Purple paper people, purple paper people, purple paper people, purple paper people, purple paper people.” repeated Goriyo crisply. Now he flexed his claws, as if eager to run them across Nobu’s throat.
Nobu steeled himself. All he could do was pray that the demon’s pride and quick mouth would doom him before he caught on. “Oyirog.”
“Oyirog, Oyirog, Oyirog, Oyirog, Oyirog.” said Goriyo without a moment’s hesitation. Nobu grinned triumphantly.
And then nothing happened.
“Well?” said Goriyo. “Was that it?”
“Um,” said Nobu. “I don’t suppose you feel odd, at all?”
“Not particularly.” said Goriyo, and then seemed to think about it. “Ohhh, I see. Clever trick you did there. My own name backwards, eh?”
“Yes!” said Nobu, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. “I have tricked you, you demon. Begone from this place for a hundred years!”
“Well,” said Goriyo, “about that. You see, that rule about tricking us into saying our own names backwards isn’t actually real. We made that rumor up to fool cocky humans into trying it on us and sparing us the time of fighting them. To be quite honest with you, I didn’t think it would actually work.”
“Well, shit.” said Nobu, suddenly reflecting on why, when it comes to demonslaying, one should never bank on rumors one picks up in a tavern. He turned to run, but sad to say, he did not make it very far.
Goriyo’s delivery of Nobu’s corpse left the villagers in a state of considerable frustration, though his subsequent devouring of the village lawyer went some way towards alleviating their anger. “Okay,” said Goro, the town crier, “so much for the third time being the charm. But I’ll go deliver a message to Lord Shaijo again, and this time I’m sure-“
“Enough!” cried Daisuke, the blacksmith. “I don’t know about you people, but I for one am sick and tired of waiting for Lord Shaijo’s men to rid us of this demon.”
“Daisuke is right.” said Takuya, the tailor. “It’s time we take matters into our own hands.”
“But how?” said Yoko, the baker’s wife. “I’m as sick of this demon as anyone, but we are only simple villagers. What can we do to defeat the demon?”
A new voice spoke up then. “This may sound crazy,” it said, “but I think I have a plan. Listen to me, and we’ll see if we can’t show this Goriyo a thing or two...”
---
The next day, Goriyo was once again awakened by the sound of someone yelling. The demon smiled groggily and opened his eyes, expecting some stupid human to be standing there challenging him- but as he awoke, he found that the voice was coming from somewhere outside the voice. “Help!” cried the voice in the distance. “Oh, someone help me! Won’t someone please come and help!”
Needless to say, Goriyo had very little interest in helping out a traveler in need, but the thought of stumbling upon a wounded human and gobbling him up was more than enticing. Goriyo crashed through the trees in the direction of the voice, crying out to it in response: “Where are you, friend? Let me help you!”
“This way!” cried the voice. Goriyo followed it, and found that the voice was coming from within an abandoned mine in the mountains. “My friend and I were exploring the mine, but there was a cave-in!” The voice echoed from within. “A rock has crushed my legs! Oh, please do help!”
Goriyo was understandably wary about crawling into an abandoned mine, for he was a fairly practical demon. However, the smell of blood was filling his nostrils, and he could tell that it was coming from within the cave. Drawn by the scent of it like a shark in the water, Goriyo lowered himself and entered the mine, crawling through the darkness with only the sunlight at his back to guide him.
The smell of blood grew stronger as he went deeper and deeper, until at last he could tell that he was coming upon the source. Goriyo’s fangs opened wide, and he fully expected to find his prey ahead of him, helpless and ripe for the taking... but what he found at the end of the mine was not a man at all, but a pile of raw meat. “What is this!?” Goriyo cried, just as the sunlight behind him disappeared.
The demon howled in fury and rushed back to the entrance of the mine, but in place of the open cave mouth he had entered through was a great iron door that had not been there when he had come upon the mine’s exterior. His fists pounded on the metal uselessly as he roared and swore, but the door would not budge, and Goriyo the demon realized that he was well and truly trapped.
Outside the mine, the villagers of Kitaku began the trek back to their village, which they knew would now be safe from demons for a good long while. The great iron door had been crafted by Daisuke the blacksmith and hidden by a stone-colored tarp designed by Takuya the tailor, and it would more than serve to keep the demon trapped for a good few centuries at the least. The demon never would have entered the mine at all, of course, had it not been for the ventriloquistic talents of Goro the town crier, who had thrown his voice to make it appear as if it had been coming from within the mine. Yoko, the butcher’s wife, had selected her late husband’s finest cuts of raw meat, and together with the rest of the villagers had transported them to the mine’s interior, thus securing the bait needed for the demon’s imprisonment.
That night, the villagers finally threw the victory feast they had been waiting to throw for so long. They drank not to the honor of Lord Shaijo nor his champions, but rather to themselves, for it had been through their own labor that the demon had finally been defeated. Each of them made a toast to the other, until at last they begged a speech from the plan’s architect, whose clever strategy had helped the people of Kitaku save themselves. He was reluctant at first, of course, but at last relented, and the villagers of Kitaku listened eagerly to what he had to say.
“Sassafrass!” said Moe, the town drunk, and that was the end of that.
As we all know, of course, such contented little hamlets are ripe for disaster. In this case, disaster took the form of a demon called Goriyo. He was as tall as three houses stacked on top of each other, with arms like tree trunks and a wide mouth full of razor-sharp fangs. When Goriyo walked, the ground shook like there was an earthquake. His skin was pure black, like someone had painted him up with tar.
Now, all that doesn’t necessarily make someone a demon, and it’s important not to judge people by appearances. Goriyo wasn’t evil because he was tall or scary-looking; he was evil because he ate people. He was quite good at it, too, and could swipe grown men off their feet and chomp them down as easily as you or I might eat an egg roll. He was a mean, nasty old demon, was Goriyo, and Kitaku was where he’d decided to go hunting.
If Goriyo was a dumber demon, this would be a very short story: he would have just waltzed into Kitaku and eaten everybody, and this story would end on a very sour note. But Goriyo was smart, and he knew that if he just up and ate everyone, he’d have to spend weeks looking for another village to devour. (That, and binging on greasy human villagers tended to give him the runs.) So when Goriyo first came to Kitaku, sending villagers screaming and locking their doors, he didn’t eat everyone; he simply grabbed up a few villagers, chewed them up, and walked away to go sleep off his meal in the forest.
At first, the villagers thought Goriyo was gone for good, until he came back out of the forest the next day and swept up the village innkeeper, gobbling him down like a tasty snack before heading back into the forest. As the days passed, this kept up: Goriyo would emerge out of the woods like a nightmare, grab someone and eat them, and then leave. The villagers of Kitaku were terrified of the demon, understandably so, and wondered how they might be rid of him. “We should call Lord Shaijo!” said Daisuke, the village blacksmith. “He’ll know what to do!”
“I’ll make for the capital city at once!” said Goro, the town crier. “I’ll tell Lord Shaijo to send his greatest warriors to help us!”
“Applesauce!” said Moe, the town drunk. He was ignored.
Lord Shaijo was not a particularly unkind ruler, so he agreed to send one of his greatest warriors to fight the demon: Omuro Two-Hands, a valiant fighter whose skill with a sword was legendary. Omuro traveled for many days to get to Kitaku, and when he arrived the people greeted him with cheers of joy and tears of relief. At last, they said to each other, a brave hero has come to slay the demon that has been plaguing us! Omuro promised the villagers that he would come back with the demon’s head or not at all, and went off into the forest in search of Goriyo.
The forest outside Kitaku was a dark and treacherous place, but Omuro was not afraid, for he was a seasoned soldier and so the darkness held no terror for him. With his blade in hand he made his way to the center of the forest, where Goriyo slumbered peacefully. To kill a sleeping enemy, even a murderous demon, was dishonorable, and so Omuro announced his presence to Goriyo with a mighty cry. “Awaken, demon, and face me! I am Omuro Two-Hands, and I come in the name of Lord Shaijo to demand vengeance for the people of Kitaku! Awaken, and face me!”
And awaken Goriyo did. He stood, stretching his long, long arms and yawning to reveal his mouth full of huge, dagger-like fangs. It occurred to Omuro for the first time that perhaps honor was not all it was cracked up to be, and that perhaps he should have killed the demon while it slept. But as the time for that was over, he steeled his blade and readied himself for a fight.
Goriyo had had an easy time of killing human villagers, but he was a demon, and this was not the first time he had fought a human champion. He swiped at Omuro with his razor-sharp claws, but Omuro only blocked his attack with a swing of his mighty sword. He slashed at the demon and opened a cut on Goriyo’s flank, and the demon howled in pain. Omuro was cocky, then, and assumed the fight had already been won. He allowed the demon to retreat further back into the clearing, readying himself for the demon’s counterattack.
Goriyo was terribly strong, and he wrenched a huge tree out of the ground without any effort and threw it at Omuro, hoping to crush the tiny human with its weight. Omuro’s sword was pure sharp steel, however, and carved the tree in half before it could hit him. So Goriyo tried again, this time with a boulder he plucked out of the ground like a pebble. Omuro’s sword had been blessed by the gods, however, and it carved through the stone like butter.
But as mentioned previously, Goriyo was not a stupid demon, and he learned from his mistakes. The next thing he reached for was made of neither stone nor wood, but wax. It was a beehive, and Goriyo threw it at Omuro just as he had thrown the tree and the boulder. Omuro sliced the beehive in half effortlessly, but it was not until he heard the angry buzzing that he realized what he had done.
The bees swarmed him in an angry cloud, and he swung his sword at them to drive them away. A sword of blessed pure steel wasn’t really any more effective at cutting a cloud of tiny bees than a simple stick, however, and the bees continued to sting and harass him. By the time Omuro saw Goriyo’s claws coming for his neck, it was already too late.
When the villagers of Kitaku heard the rustling of the trees near the forest’s entrance, they naturally assumed that it was Omuro, returning in victory with the demon’s head slung over his shoulder. They were understandably very upset to find that it was, in fact, the reverse, particularly when Goriyo snatched up the village butcher and ate him as well. The villagers ran back to their houses and boarded up the doors until Goriyo was gone, resolving to ask their lord for help a second time.
“This is terrible!” said Takuya, the tailor.
“Yes, this is extremely terrible,” said Yoko, the butcher’s wife, who had taken a sizable life insurance policy out on her husband. “So terrible. Woe is me. I am in such grief right now.”
“Stifle your mourning for now, good woman,” said Goro, the town crier. “No more will die to this demon, I swear it. I will make for the capital again and inform Lord Shaijo of what has happened here. He will save us, I know it!”
“Ruggumfruggum!” said Moe, the town drunk. Once again, his contribution to the discussion was summarily dismissed.
Lord Shaijo was very angry when he heard of Omuro’s death at the demon’s hands, and so he called his court together to consult them for advice. Perhaps, said the court wizard Hotaru, where steel had failed to kill the demon, magic might suffice. Hotaru was an accomplished sorcerer who knew many powerful spells, and he was confident that his magic would be enough to take down the demon terrorizing Kitaku. Lord Shaijo agreed, and so Hotaru set out to succeed where Omuro Two-Hands had failed.
The people of Kitaku were overjoyed when he arrived, and assured him that he would be victorious, probably. Hotaru had heard what had befallen Omuro, and decided that the same would not happen to him. Rather than letting the demon use nature’s power against him, he would use it against the demon! To prepare for the fight, Hotaru selected his best transformation spell, and headed off into the forest with his staff in hand. The darkness of the forest held no fear for Hotaru, for with a wave of his hand he could conjure a flame to guide his way.
Once again, Goriyo was asleep in the clearing at the forest’s center. Not unlike Omuro, Hotaru’s pride would not allow him to slay the demon while it was asleep, and so he cleared his voice and shouted as loudly as he could. “Awaken, demon, and face me! I am Hotaru of the Flame, and I come in the name of Lord Shaijo to demand vengeance for the people of Kitaku, and for Omuro Two-Hands! Awaken, and face me!”
Awaken Goriyo did- thinking, perhaps, that Omuro’s murder had not taken, and the warrior was back for a second round. Upon seeing that it was only a frail man without even a blade, however, he laughed loudly. “Who is this they send to fight me?” the demon rumbled. “A man in a dress?”
“It’s a robe,” Hotaru cried indignantly, and launched a blast of flame at Goriyo. Being creatures of the supernatural, however, demons are resistant to magic, and the flame could not scorch Goriyo’s skin any blacker than it already was. Goriyo shrugged off the blast and sent magic of his own Hotaru’s way; foul magic that made the trees rot and the air burn dry.
Hotaru’s own magic faltered in the face of the mighty demon, and he knew that he would have to rely on the transformation spell he had prepared. With a wordless cry, Hotaru the sorcerer was gone: and in his place, a sleek black serpent coiled through the leaves and the undergrowth. For all his great strength, Goriyo possessed one weakness: his eyesight was not sharp, and he relied instead upon the smell of warm human blood to sense his prey. The demon could not see the snake slithering towards him, and assumed that the tiny human man had simply run away (as humans were known to do). Shrugging, Goriyo returned to his slumber, ignorant of the danger creeping toward him.
Hotaru had chosen his spell with care: the serpent he had transformed himself into was the deadly kuroshi viper, whose bite was so deadly that even demons feared it. Hotaru knew that the venom of the kuroshi would kill Goriyo in seconds, and all he had to do was get close enough to land a bite.
Unfortunately for Hotaru, he and Goriyo were not the only ones in the clearing that day. A hungry hawk, frustrated by the lack of prey out on the plains, had flown into the forest to rest before hunting again. The hawk had no fear of demons nor sorcerers, being capable of flying away before either of them could hurt it, and had watched the battle thus far with about as much interest as a hawk watches anything it can’t eat.
When Hotaru transformed, however, the hawk’s interest was caught, for although Goriyo did not notice the snake slithering through the leaves, the hawk very much did. It swooped down and swept Hotaru-the-snake up in its talons, pecking at his scales in hopes of a tasty reptilian meal. Hotaru naturally panicked and bit at the hawk, but the hawk’s talons were long and hard enough that his bite could do nothing. In his panic, Hotaru ended the spell, and the hawk was very frustrated to find that it was now holding a grown man in its claws instead of a delicious viper. The hawk, as most animals will do upon finding that they have mistakenly begun eating a human, immediately dropped him in disgust.
The falling sorcerer landed right atop Goriyo’s lap. The rest of Hotaru’s life was very brief, and very messy.
Once again, the people of Kitaku amassed at the entrance of the forest, content in the knowledge that Hotaru would soon be emerging from the trees with news of the demon’s death. One can scarcely imagine their disappointment when instead it was Goriyo who brought news of Hotaru’s death, in the form of the sorcerers' mangled body being thrown at them. Once again, Goriyo emerged out of the forest with his jaws dripping with blood, and once again he made off with a villager: this time, the village bartender.
“This is really starting to get out of hand,” said Daisuke, the village blacksmith.
“I agree.” said Yoko, the butcher’s wife, who had owed the bartender a sizable amount of credit. “Truly, this demon is a scourge upon our land.”
“Okay, so the sorcerer didn’t really work out.” admitted Goro, the town crier. “But as they say, the third time is the charm. I will tell Lord Shaijo what has happened here, and this time he will be sure to send someone who can help us!”
“Dysentery!” said Moe, the town drunk. (By this point, the other villagers were beginning to seriously consider feeding Moe to the demon.)
For the third time, Goro the town crier rode to the capital city, and he told Lord Shaijo what had become of his sorcerer. Lord Shaijo was understandably distraught to hear of Hotaru’s untimely death, for the wizard had owed him a sizable amount of credit. “That is more than enough,” said Lord Shaijo sternly. “I have had enough of this demon making a mockery of me. I will offer a reward of ten thousand gold coins to anyone who can kill the demon Goriyo for good and for all!”
The offer of a reward spread across the land, and soon caught the attention of an ambitious young man named Nobu. Nobu was a wanderer, a rogue, and all-around scoundrel who fancied himself the cleverest man in the land. He was a master wordsmith who made his money challenging travelers to games of riddles, and taking their coin when they inevitably failed to outwit him. Nobu had once heard a rumor in his favorite tavern: supposedly, if you could make a demon speak its name backwards, that demon would have no choice but to return to the underworld for a hundred years before it could resurface again. Confident in his ability to trick Goriyo into saying his own name backwards, Nobu packed his things and made his way to Kitaku, where the demon would be waiting.
By this point, the villagers of Kitaku were becoming somewhat wary of getting their hopes up about anyone actually managing to defeat Goriyo. Still, they offered Nobu as warm a welcome as they were able, and the boy’s quick wit endeared him to them. “Perhaps,” said Takuya, the tailor, “this boy may succeed where the other two failed. If what he says about the demon’s name is true, he need only trick him into saying it backwards. At last, this nightmare may come to an end!”
“Have no fear, old man.” said Nobu confidently. “Demons may be deadly, but they are notoriously easy to trick. Swords and spells are not what one needs to defeat them; one needs only the skill of one’s mind.” So sure he was in himself that Nobu’s good cheer spread to the villagers, and already they began making preparations for his victory feast.
The next morning, Nobu strode off into the forest, already rehearsing the trick he would use to fool the demon. The darkness of the forest held no fear for him, for he was a smart boy and knew that the demon would make its presence known before it ambushed him. Finally Nobu found Goriyo slumbering in the forest clearing. Unlike Omuro and Hotaru before him, Nobu held himself to no code of honor; however, he couldn’t very well trick the demon into saying his own name backwards while he slumbered. So Nobu cleared his throat and announced his presence: “Awaken, demon, and face me! I am Nobu the Trickster, and I come in the name of Lord Shaijo to demand vengeance for the people of Kitaku, as well as for Omuro Two-Hands and Hotaru of the Flame! Awaken, and face me!”
Awaken Goriyo did, for the third time looking down at the little man facing him. “Do the humans grow so desperate that they send a child to fight me?” Goriyo sneered. “I must remember to thank them for sending me such a tasty snack.”
“I have no intention of fighting you, Goriyo,” said Nobu, “for you would surely tear me to pieces. Rather, I come to challenge you to a game of wits.”
“A game of wits?” Goriyo echoed. “What foolishness. I should eat you here and now.”
“Do so if you wish,” said Nobu loftily, “but I know your fellow demons are watching from the underworld. Decline my challenge and they shall all know you for the dimwitted brute you are.”
“This is true,” Goriyo admitted. “Very well then. Outwit me, and I shall return to the underworld for a hundred years. Fail, however, and I shall sup the marrow from your bones.”
The hard part for Nobu was over: he had been slightly worried that Goriyo would simply decline his challenge and eat him. “The challenge is this,” he said. “I shall say a series of phrases. After each one, you must repeat it five times as quickly as you can. Go too slow, or stumble, and the victory goes to me. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Goriyo, smiling smugly, for he knew that the demon tongue is much more nimble than that of a man’s. “Speak your words, human.”
“Red leather, yellow leather.” said Nobu.
“Red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather, red leather yellow leather.” The demon repeated the phrase without so much as a stumble, grinning widely to show his fangs.
Nobu tried not to let the fear show on his face. “Purple paper people.”
“Purple paper people, purple paper people, purple paper people, purple paper people, purple paper people.” repeated Goriyo crisply. Now he flexed his claws, as if eager to run them across Nobu’s throat.
Nobu steeled himself. All he could do was pray that the demon’s pride and quick mouth would doom him before he caught on. “Oyirog.”
“Oyirog, Oyirog, Oyirog, Oyirog, Oyirog.” said Goriyo without a moment’s hesitation. Nobu grinned triumphantly.
And then nothing happened.
“Well?” said Goriyo. “Was that it?”
“Um,” said Nobu. “I don’t suppose you feel odd, at all?”
“Not particularly.” said Goriyo, and then seemed to think about it. “Ohhh, I see. Clever trick you did there. My own name backwards, eh?”
“Yes!” said Nobu, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. “I have tricked you, you demon. Begone from this place for a hundred years!”
“Well,” said Goriyo, “about that. You see, that rule about tricking us into saying our own names backwards isn’t actually real. We made that rumor up to fool cocky humans into trying it on us and sparing us the time of fighting them. To be quite honest with you, I didn’t think it would actually work.”
“Well, shit.” said Nobu, suddenly reflecting on why, when it comes to demonslaying, one should never bank on rumors one picks up in a tavern. He turned to run, but sad to say, he did not make it very far.
Goriyo’s delivery of Nobu’s corpse left the villagers in a state of considerable frustration, though his subsequent devouring of the village lawyer went some way towards alleviating their anger. “Okay,” said Goro, the town crier, “so much for the third time being the charm. But I’ll go deliver a message to Lord Shaijo again, and this time I’m sure-“
“Enough!” cried Daisuke, the blacksmith. “I don’t know about you people, but I for one am sick and tired of waiting for Lord Shaijo’s men to rid us of this demon.”
“Daisuke is right.” said Takuya, the tailor. “It’s time we take matters into our own hands.”
“But how?” said Yoko, the baker’s wife. “I’m as sick of this demon as anyone, but we are only simple villagers. What can we do to defeat the demon?”
A new voice spoke up then. “This may sound crazy,” it said, “but I think I have a plan. Listen to me, and we’ll see if we can’t show this Goriyo a thing or two...”
---
The next day, Goriyo was once again awakened by the sound of someone yelling. The demon smiled groggily and opened his eyes, expecting some stupid human to be standing there challenging him- but as he awoke, he found that the voice was coming from somewhere outside the voice. “Help!” cried the voice in the distance. “Oh, someone help me! Won’t someone please come and help!”
Needless to say, Goriyo had very little interest in helping out a traveler in need, but the thought of stumbling upon a wounded human and gobbling him up was more than enticing. Goriyo crashed through the trees in the direction of the voice, crying out to it in response: “Where are you, friend? Let me help you!”
“This way!” cried the voice. Goriyo followed it, and found that the voice was coming from within an abandoned mine in the mountains. “My friend and I were exploring the mine, but there was a cave-in!” The voice echoed from within. “A rock has crushed my legs! Oh, please do help!”
Goriyo was understandably wary about crawling into an abandoned mine, for he was a fairly practical demon. However, the smell of blood was filling his nostrils, and he could tell that it was coming from within the cave. Drawn by the scent of it like a shark in the water, Goriyo lowered himself and entered the mine, crawling through the darkness with only the sunlight at his back to guide him.
The smell of blood grew stronger as he went deeper and deeper, until at last he could tell that he was coming upon the source. Goriyo’s fangs opened wide, and he fully expected to find his prey ahead of him, helpless and ripe for the taking... but what he found at the end of the mine was not a man at all, but a pile of raw meat. “What is this!?” Goriyo cried, just as the sunlight behind him disappeared.
The demon howled in fury and rushed back to the entrance of the mine, but in place of the open cave mouth he had entered through was a great iron door that had not been there when he had come upon the mine’s exterior. His fists pounded on the metal uselessly as he roared and swore, but the door would not budge, and Goriyo the demon realized that he was well and truly trapped.
Outside the mine, the villagers of Kitaku began the trek back to their village, which they knew would now be safe from demons for a good long while. The great iron door had been crafted by Daisuke the blacksmith and hidden by a stone-colored tarp designed by Takuya the tailor, and it would more than serve to keep the demon trapped for a good few centuries at the least. The demon never would have entered the mine at all, of course, had it not been for the ventriloquistic talents of Goro the town crier, who had thrown his voice to make it appear as if it had been coming from within the mine. Yoko, the butcher’s wife, had selected her late husband’s finest cuts of raw meat, and together with the rest of the villagers had transported them to the mine’s interior, thus securing the bait needed for the demon’s imprisonment.
That night, the villagers finally threw the victory feast they had been waiting to throw for so long. They drank not to the honor of Lord Shaijo nor his champions, but rather to themselves, for it had been through their own labor that the demon had finally been defeated. Each of them made a toast to the other, until at last they begged a speech from the plan’s architect, whose clever strategy had helped the people of Kitaku save themselves. He was reluctant at first, of course, but at last relented, and the villagers of Kitaku listened eagerly to what he had to say.
“Sassafrass!” said Moe, the town drunk, and that was the end of that.