15 Chapter 15
A sharp spike of cursed energy followed the words, as he felt cursed energy manifest and spread out above them.
Old woman Kugisake quickly stumbled to her feet with the aid of her walking stick before rushing out of the front door in haste.
In a blur of movement, Jiki was on the roof of the story building, watching as a miasma of black curse technique spread out from just above them, down to the edges of even his prodigious vision—the whole town then, he mused.
"What was that?" he asked as the older woman finally made her way out to watch the end process of the technique activation.
"A veil. A well-formed one too. Kimiko must be in a hurry. I've to put a stop to her madness before she ends us all."
With a nod of his head in agreement, he looked at the door just as Aiko stepped out with hurried movements.
"There's no service!" she called out, waving the phone at him. His eyes picked up the image of a red bar.
"It's a specialized veil then," the older woman called out while looking at the technique completion. "The question is, why would she even bother with one?"
"Specialized veil?" he asked idly as he tried to pick up old woman Kimiko's cursed energy. But since the release of the veil, he had been picking up multiple cursed energy signatures moving toward them. People or cursed spirits?
Assailants?
He turned his attention from the incoming people, back to Granny Kugisake as she replied.
"A specialized kind of barrier. Its activation sacrifices flexibility for more restrictions."
He had an idea of who the barrier would be restricting after hearing that, but it was not like him to act on just maybes, and without a solid plan and concrete evidence.
"Watch Aiko," he called out as he turned towards the long pathway they had taken into the small village.
With a flex of his cursed energy, he went bounding off toward the boundary between the veil and the outer world. In a straight line, headless of the obstacles in his way, he ran at full tilt. Jumping over houses, roof running, and finally blitzing down the long stretch of walkway that led to the bus stop they had dropped.
He finally came to a full stop in front of the veil by skidding across the ground and slowing his intense momentum. The moment he got to the barrier and pressed his hands around it...
It repulsed him and forced him a few steps back. That confirmed it. He was the one the barrier was specialized against. The question was why?
With a single step back to brace himself, he cocked a fist back, ready to put some real force into it.
A shuffle of footsteps behind him, and he turned casually to regard the owners. An older man, maybe fifty years old. With brown hair and eyes. A heavy physique with sun-darkened skin indicated heavy labor on a farm. He was dressed in simple night clothes with empty blank eyes that struggled to follow his movements.
Just behind the man was a woman, dressed in similar night clothes but with a darker shade of brown hair. Couples? He had passed a couple of smaller buildings not far from here. They moved to him with slow shuffling at first, before the shuffle transitioned to a jog that suddenly picked up speed as they charged towards him with synchronized and frantic movements that made him peer deeper at their being.
The familiar look of a sticky, threadlike substance that wrapped and entangled the very essence of their being made it clear who was really in control. The special grade curse was somehow puppeteering their figures even from behind her seal.
With his attention on them, they continued charging at him with reckless abandon, all the while without making a single sound, other than the meaty sound of bare feet slapping against the ground.
He met the first one and dodged its wild lunge. Swiftly moving on to the woman, while ignoring the random flailing man behind him trying to get back to his feet. The curse's control was not perfect then, he noted. Must be an effect of the seal, even weakened, it was not something that just anyone would mess with.
He sent a very mundane palm strike into the charging woman's tummy, then an elbow to the side of the head the moment she fell over to knock her out.
He stood above her fallen form and noted that while they might be controlled, the technique didn't suddenly make them more than they already were. It had simply turned a placid old couple into rabid humans.
Without looking, he tilted his head to the side and dodged the blow thrown at the back of his head. It had finally recovered enough to control the older man's limbs, and it only took it three seconds he noted. Suboptimal.
With a swift movement, he goes low and sweeps the man off his feet, a split second later he joins the man mid-air and slams the heel of his feet into the side of his slightly balding head.
The man drops like a sack of bricks, his previous rabid features shift back as he sinks into the oblivion that is unconsciousness.
The shuffle of multiple footsteps forces his eyes up, and he bears witness to over a dozen shambling older men and women. This was a futile attempt at stopping him. He knew it. Whatever was controlling the villagers knew this also, so why even bother?
Another loud snap filled with cursed energy blew through the village and he almost dismissed it, till his brain dredged up a memory and he deduced it for what it was. The first time he heard that particular sound. A chain snapping. The chain around the Straw statue. The cursed spirit.
With that realization came clarity. This was all a distraction. Ignoring the slapping of bare feet on concrete as the rabid men and women ran to him with eerier abandon, he charted the optimal partway back to the forest. He was not certain he could beat a centuries-old cursed spirit, but he knew all he had to do was make a big enough mess and Satoru was sure to notice even with the barrier up.
A smile came easy to him this time. With a running start at the lead charging man, he jumped and buried his foot into the face of the empty-eyed man, using it as a platform to leap over the masses of mundane men and women, and onto the roof of a close by building.
For a second he considered what would've happened if he was facing actual jujutsu sorcerers instead of elderly men and women, and had to fight a shiver down. The technique was borderline insidious.
Finally turning his attention away from the horde beneath him, he started moving toward the forest that demarcated the mountain range from the village.
xxxx
She had rushed back to the boundary, where her greatest act of sacrifice was achieved. Where she committed a deed that would've put her name in the history books with the likes of Arashi Toma; the man who split and sealed the special grade curse; Sukuna. If she cared for it.
Sparing only a glance at her house, she didn't bother to step in. The cracked glasses and shattered walls were enough to let her know that Kimiko had gone for Nobara. Unfortunately, after the monstrous Gojo clan brat had broken through her strongest seal trap, It must not have taken her much to break through the weakened seal formation that she never had the time to reinforce.
The thought of her granddaughter in the hands of that woman was enough anger to fuel her walk. She barged into the forest and almost recoiled at the feeling of Jorogumo's touch on her soul once more.
Aiko stepped in just after her and flinched. The beautiful but scarred amber-eyed girl had escaped the worst of the monster's touch and technique as a child. But the few minutes Jorogumo was semi-released fourteen years ago was enough for Her touch to linger on the child.
She remembered how the brat had forced his way into Her presence with the bravery of the Ignorant. A splitting image of the last time two Other Gojo's broke in with the manipulation of Kimiko and almost destroyed the seal that held Jorogumo.
Brushing a stray branch out of her sight, she powered forward with anger-induced momentum and stumbled on an overgrown root.
It was only the quick action of Aiko that saved her from planting her face into the ground. A flitting glance and she saw the way the poor girl was holding up.
Much better than Chiyo expected if she was completely honest. The girl had grown into her own person now. Even the scars had done little to detract from her beauty and resilience. She was almost certain that the scar was somehow the white-haired brat's fault.
The moment they broke into the clearing that housed the sealed and bounded straw doll, she drew in a sharp breath.
Four chains had snapped, while only a single Nail held the straw doll to the ground. The seals that should've suppressed Jorogumo's awareness were all burnt up and she could almost feel the eight eyes of the malevolent cursed spirit peer deep into her very being.
The seals could not have degraded this fast. Not when she had made sure to check up on it just that morning. The reason this horror was happening was in front of her.
Over thirty villagers knelt before the straw doll in a wide overlapping circle and with their heads to the ground in an act of worship. Even with their head bowed, she could recognize most of them as the older villagers who had experienced Jorogumo's touch. The younger people there were as a result of her failure for not noticing how much Kimiko had weakened it, Nobara's presence here was an even greater show of her failure as a protector and more importantly, as a grandmother. Luckily the Ito's were not there, at least not after they had bound their forms to the bed before leaving.
The mastermind of this atrocity stood in the shadow of the giant straw doll and watched her walk up with a mad and delighted smile on her face.
Even after three decades of knowing Kimiko, she never would've expected her to be this mad.
Sharp brown eyes buried in a weathered face filled with fury stared down the uncaring visage of the other woman.
"Why?"
She rasped out at the older woman, while Aiko stood behind her with a horrified look as she watched men and women she knew as children get the very essence of their being sucked out to reinforce the creature sealed in the straw doll.
Even with her lack of innate technique, the cursed energy flowing in a weblike pattern linking the bowed figures to the straw doll was very visible due to the sheer density of the energy present.
She focused her attention on the other woman and continued, "We were finally free of that monster, so why? Why are you trying so hard to put us back under her feet!"
The other woman tilted her head at her and gave her a toothless smile before replying.
"Because she is mother. You might have forgotten, but her silks comforted us, her carcass guided us, and under her wings were we nurtured and protected. You used to know that Kugisake. What happened to you?"
"Protected??" The woman known as Granny Kugisake spat out the question as she took a step forward.
"Her silks strangled us, while her caresses held us bound to centuries of slavery. We had no choice but to leave with fear every night, In fear of who she might take the next morning. We were nothing but cattle!"
"You asked what changed? Clarity!" She barked out, her anger giving her strength as she took another step toward the other woman. "Losing children to a capricious deity and knowing that I'll also lose grandchildren disabused me of the thought of any more worship."
Letting out a tired breath, she looked at the uncaring visage of her former best friend. "You would've understood that if you ever loved someone other than Her"
Those were the words that finally broke through the stoic and uncaring visage of her Old friend. "Don't you dare speak of Her like you know Her. Like you didn't betray her and trap her for decades"
"Of course, I know her" Granny Kugisake replied back, as a tired, sad, and regretful smile spread out on her lips. "After all, I used to be her favorite."
With those final words as a spark, the other woman's visage contorted into a mask of anger and jealousy.
Reversed Cursed Technique: Call of the anguished fallen.
Kimiko barked out as she pressed her hands together to form an ox hand sign. The fingers on her right-hand were vertical, with the fingers on her left hand intersecting it halfway horizontally.
Kugisake watched as four skeletons crawled and forced their way out of the earth's grip with bone-tipped hands and uncaring savagery, they dug their way up with the vengeful and accursed fallen.
Kimiko's innate technique was nothing special by itself. it had been formed after multiple generations of her bloodline's servitude and worship to Jorogumo and was simply the act of sacrificing people to the cursed spirit and taking a shred of their cursed energy for herself.
The reversed curse technique was where the threat was. Using positive and negative cursed energy, she brought back people that had been sacrificed to Jorogumo in a mockery of half-life with the positive cursed energy, and with the negative cursed energy she empowered their forms with false muscle and heavy reinforced bones to do battle for her sake.
That was why she chose this place for them to face each other. This was where the shrine housing the false deity they worshipped used to be. This was the location for some of the most horrific sacrifices Japan had ever witnessed. This was where two young girls grew up on the knees of the monster as her favorite shrine maidens. This was where two best friends would've their last and final bout.
The creaking of the chains as another link was on the verge of snapping made her sigh. With a wave for Aiko to step back, she held her walking cane tight before throwing the stick up. Mid-air, the single walking stick split apart and separated into multiple thin shards that floated to surround her. Spikes.
The last shrine maidens faced each other on the unhallowed grounds of a false deity under a full moon with the bodies of unwilling supplicants as a backdrop.
