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The battlefield is a place of passion, of desperate souls doing anything it takes to hold onto the flesh they currently wear. Higanbana has seen the barracks burned, has heard the cries of fear and fury, has smelled what besieged men cook in their soup pots.
Really, she's disappointed it doesn't have more to offer her. The soldiers have passion, but not determination. Not focus. Theirs is the hurried blooming of a flower in a poor season, racing to set seed before a drought can wither the plant, when what she seeks is the clinging, stubborn root that holds tight to cliff faces and riverbeds in the face of forces far greater than itself.
What she seeks is the general.
His soldiers have been fighting one losing battle after another, outnumbered and underprepared, and each battle makes him more stubborn, more obsessed with defying the fate that looms over all of them. That's a soul that would make good company, down on the silent banks of the Sanzu River, far from the crossings to Lady Enma's realm.
The night before his soldiers' most dangerous battle to date, Higanbana appears before him. Black butterflies dance around her and she lets the heat of her desire shine out through her eyes. The general's face is ashen beneath the shadow of his helm, but his eyes are fixed on her and his mouth is set in a stern line. He has a guess what he's facing.
He swallows hard. "Can you help my soldiers escape from here alive?" he asks. His voice is hoarse, with smoke, with shouting, with struggle, but his words are resolute. "My life is yours."
Higanbana laughs. She steps up close to her general, reaching up to stroke his stubble-roughened face with one soft hand. "How could I refuse an offering like that? Go, my brave soldier. Lead your men to safety tomorrow. I will meet you on the riverbank at the battle's end."
He bows to her, stiff and formal. "As you will, lady of blessings."
What a sweet thing for him to call her! She'll definitely have to keep this one.
The battle the next day is one of the most savage she's yet watched. Many souls depart for the underworld over the course of the day. But her general's men are not among them; she wields lantern fire and snaring vines and strength-sapping pollens to confound their enemies, keeping that entire force at bay until the general is able to secure them a retreat. His resolve never falters, that obsession with his goals burning unabated in the cage of his ribs.
At sunset his men are camped in a valley, bandaging their wounds, foraging for anything edible they can find among the trees. The general slips away from them to walk down to the water's edge. He favors his left leg but seems to be trying not to let his men see.
At the water's edge he stops, facing the dark water, squaring his shoulders. "God or spirit, lady of battle, whoever you are... Thank you. You have kept your promise. I am here to keep mine."
Higanbana steps out of the shadows on the far bank, walking across the water, red spider lilies blooming in the wake of her footsteps. "Come with me, then, brave soldier."
His hand, when he puts it in hers, is warm and callused, bones lying close under the skin after hard campaigning. His eyes are bright and clear. He will not doubt his choices.
Higanbana pulls him forward, through the thin veil between realms: between the death dealt here today and the death this man has dealt throughout his life, bringing him through is easy. The twilight of the mortal realm gives way to the rich, tangible darkness at the edges of the underworld, the murmuring of a nameless waterway to the slow silence of her own flower-choked meander of the Sanzu River. Her general's grip tightens on her fingers. She leads him to the edge of the water, where the hungry crimson flowers, her flowers, sway toward the warmth of mortal flesh.
He looks so grim when she peers at his face, but no less committed to his purpose. She will never let him go. "This way," she says, dancing into the flowers, across the water. Her general follows, and her flowers rise up to embrace him, twining around his legs and pulling at his armor, blossoming hungrily. He holds himself braced as though for battle and does not retreat. "Are you frightened?"
He doesn't even glare at her. "Not at all," he says steadily, and it might even be true.
They're good last words. Her flowers engulf him, stems reaching like vines, blooms opening to cover his face and veil any last-moment panic so he can keep his dignity as she drags him under.
Her stems pull him down to the riverbed where her roots are buried, and her roots seek out the joints in his armor to burrow inside and latch onto flesh. Thin and hungry as he is, there is still plenty of sustenance clinging to those stubborn bones. The water splashes as animal desperation overwhelms his composure, but Higanbana doesn't hold that against him. Almost all mortal creatures resist their endings.
A heady bloom of red spreads across the surface of the water as her roots dig deep and absorb the rich nourishment of her general's flesh. His spirit has yet to attempt to flee, and it makes her so fond, that his duty and his honor should be such obsessions that they keep him in her domain instead of Lady Enma's. Her flowers grow brighter, spreading more thickly across the water.
"My proud soldier," she murmurs. "I've been searching for a guardian."
She gestures, and her flowers rise from the water once more, the general's body tangled among roots and stems and leaves. They burrow into and through his flesh, thick roots buried in the soft back of a knee and draining away the meat of the calf, new shoots streaked with blood where they curl out from beneath a collarbone. His jaw works mechanically, opening and closing without making any sounds. There may be too much water already in his lungs, or too many roots perforating his windpipe.
"Stay with me, my handsome soldier," Higanbana says, cupping his sunken face in her hands, looking into the pits where his eyes have already fallen in to feed new growth. "I promise you, I will not squander this determination."
The clattering of his jaw slows to a stop, and a bud emerges from between his teeth, swelling and unfolding with slow, steady grace. The petals are damp and soft as the tissues that feed them, bright red as the blood from a freshly slit throat. His armor is beginning to hang loose, tied as it was to fit a living man's limbs rather than the remains of her flowers' feeding.
She stays with him until her roots have found every soft pocket of sweetness in his mortal body, until skin and muscle, blood and organ have become fuel for new tendrils and fresh flowers. When his form has been reduced to spare, gleaming bone, her flowers go still, holding him in place, holding him up. He makes a lovely picture like that, and she's briefly tempted to leave him there, a beautiful sculpture to admire. His spirit could dream in the river with others she's brought home before....
But no, she did promise, and his spirit has still not left its shell. "My general," Higanbana murmurs. "Odokuro, spirit of war, soldier who will not surrender—do you hear me?"
Her general, her skeleton warrior, shifts in the snare of flowers and turns his face toward her. The fire that burned in his breast as a man is visible now, glowing in the depths of his eye sockets. He frees one arm from the flowers and reaches up, grabbing a handful of their stems and tearing them away. He keeps his gaze locked with hers as he rips his way free of the cradle of his transformation. Higanbana holds her breath. Will he want to fight her? Does he resent what he's become?
When he's freed himself and is standing in the shallow water by the riverbank, Odokuro draws his sword. Higanbana's heart pounds. She was sure she'd taken his measure—
He goes to his knees among the spider lilies, water lapping at his bones, and holds up his sword as if presenting it to her, laid flat across his upturned hands. The fires in his eyes are steady and bright. Still keeping his word.
She closes the distance between them and leans down to press a kiss to his forehead. "My guardian," she says. When she takes a step back, he looks up to watch her face. Even in his bare skull, she imagines she can see a hint of the determined expression his mortal face wore. "Come. Let me show you around your new home."