. Vibrant red flowers with thin spindly petals swayed gently in a wind that was barely present. The water lapped at the riverside as it flowed slowly downstream. Small piles of pebbles and little stones littered the coastline. A single old-fashioned wooden boat lay ashore beside the wooden dock. Fog had settled over it all, blanketing them in soft grayish white. There was no telling where the far side of the river may be across the dark rippling waters.

  Aileen drew breath. At least, her chest moved as if she did. She looked around at her surroundings, taking it in, taking her time.

  "My, my," she said. "Should I take it you were waiting for me? Did you want to see me that much?"

  "Like hell," responded a deep rumbling voice.

  Dark red robes rustled as Goukei got up from the edge of the dock, leaving his sake dish where he sat. A bone-white oar rested in the boat at his side.

  "Just that when there's things ya want done right, ya gotta do 'em yerself," he said. "Fuck my ass if I let some rookie be the one to ferry you over."

  That got a rise out of Aileen. "It's good to see you haven't changed. I thought you were banned, though?"

  "Damn right I am," he grumbled. "Enma doesn't know I'm here. Ya better 'ppreciate this, granny."

  "Ah." Aileen rifled through her coat pockets. "Oh dear. I don't have payment on me."

  "No sweat, no sweat. Yer son'll foot the bill when he gets 'round to comin' here himself." Goukei looked down on her. Then he cracked a fanged grin. "…Just fuckin' with ya. Fee got abolished a couple thousand years ago."

  "Don't scare me like that." Aileen wore an easy smile on her face, and added, "You'll be the death of me."

  Goukei scoffed and went back for his sake dish. Standing at the edge of the dock, he brought it to his lips and drank deep, dish tilting higher and higher until it was dry. The dish clattered as he dropped it at his feet, rattling until it shook itself to a stop.

  "…Aileen." Goukei didn't turn around, the waters of the Sanzu River flowing before him. "Do you have any regrets?"

  "Hmm, let's see." She tapped a finger on her chin and then snapped her fingers. "Ah. I forgot to check whether I left the stove on. And I should've told the maid before I left. Goodness, I can't believe myself. She'll be so confused when I'm not back next week."

  Goukei snorted. "A'ight, ya got nothin' important. Get on board, then. Set you on your way somewhere cozier than this shithole."

  "I think it's quite nice, in all truthfulness."

  "See if a few millennia'll change yer tune." Goukei turned around with a toothy grin. "Gonna ask to get hired on?"

  "Maybe it's not such a bad idea. Oh, but I don't think I could go swimming here, could I?"

  "Fuck outta yer mind, you ain't." Goukei chuckled to himself as he stepped into the boat and picked up his oar.

  He waited for her to board, but the boat didn't rock under his feet.

  "Somethin' the matter?" he said.

  Aileen had stopped on the dock. "There will be others who cross soon."

  "Yeah. You got that right." Goukei tapped the oar on his shoulder. "Bein' a hero ain't all sunshine and roses. You oughta know that by now, yeah?"

  "Indeed. It isn't the first time. And yet—"

  "You wish it ain't gotta come to this," he finished for her. "That's the difference between the old master and you humans, huh? Always gotta doubt yerselves, wringin' yer hands about morals this and justice that."

  Goukei thought for a moment longer, and then shook his head chuckling.

  "Or maybe that's the same wish for a better world where none of this had to happen. I wouldn't know the first thing about any of it. All goes over my head. But I ain't countin' it as a regret to the grave. You boardin' or what?"

  "…There is one more thing," said Aileen. "I didn't get the chance to talk to him, before I went. Could I ask just one thing of you?"

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  "Let's hear it."

  Aileen's mouth moved. Spider lilies swayed in the breeze. The fog shifted gently. The surface of the water rippled as it flowed towards some unseen destination.

  "If you would be so kind," said Aileen.

  Goukei didn't respond right away. His gaze drifted to one of the piles of stones, stacked just a mere foot tall.

  "Yer a real fuckin' slave driver, y'know that?" He adjusted the sash covering his eye with a quiet growl. "Yeah, I'll figure it out. Rest easy on that."

  She smiled. "Then I have nothing to regret."

  Aileen boarded the boat and settled down at the front. Goukei pushed the oar against the coastline, and the boat rocked softly as it set out on its voyage to the other side.

  . It became a sweltering inferno during the fight with Orochi, then a soaking torrent in the storm. Now, a cold breeze met Erina as she emerged from the laboratory, making her shiver. A thin layer of white frost crunched quietly under her shoes.

  Everything was frozen, as far as the eye could see. Over the ruins of the city on the Reverse, where buildings once made up a dense skyline, now presided a magnificent scenery of glittering ice. Great curving walls of white and blue. Beautiful glaciers reached for the shimmering sky amidst sloping mountains cast from solid ice. Immense waves stood frozen at the peak of their crest, forever suspended in time. Shards of ice flowed down the rivers filling the trenches left behind by the battle.

  Clear in places and opaque in others, she could see fragments and severed parts of draconic flesh laid to rest in the ice. Burned black and blue by mind-numbing cold, destroyed down to the cellular level, they were nothing but frostbitten biomass—they could no longer be called "Yamata no Orochi."

  A snowflake fluttered in front of her eyes. The storm had ended. In its place was no more than a sparse, gentle snowfall.

  At the heart of the city, all of the ice curved away as if blown back in the moment it froze. Cradled by the vague suggestion of open serpentine jaws sculpted from ice, one crystal clear arm was raised upright. A single disc rested in its grip, white and adorned in iridescent markings.

  "That's his disc," said Erina.

  But a different hand rested over it before she could approach. Servos in the fingers whirred at a near-imperceptible volume. Cables flexed in place of muscle fibers under metal plating. The artificial skin meant to disguise the prostheses had melted away in the belly of the beast.

  Darius looked down at the hand cast from ice, his own metal fingers sliding along the knuckles. They wrapped around the disc, and with a quiet snap of cracking ice, pulled it free. Half the frozen hand's fingers crumbled to his feet.

  "Erina!" Akira came up running behind her. "Don't go running off ahead of us! If you're gonna go blind charging into anything, include me before you—"

  She skidded to a halt as her eyes settled on the gunslinger. Lazarus was on her heels just a second later.

  Darius didn't pay them any attention, seemingly lost in thought. The brim of his hat obscured his eyes as his tattered coat blew in the wind behind him. He was covered in cuts and scratches. Erina's gaze followed the trail he left coming here—splatters of pure white ether that burned like fire, dripping and oozing every step of the way.

  She looked back to him, at the glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye. She saw his mouth move, but couldn't hear the murmur lost to the wind.

  The disc phased through his head as he pushed it back in. Black patterns like lightning shot down his arms. Erina felt the fabric of the world shift as the First and last Harbinger reclaimed his rightful power.

  Erina started and slid a foot back, green energy gathering at her hand… and then fading. Akira and Lazarus hadn't moved. They didn't seem like they planned on fighting again right then and there.

  "One living legend to slay another," said Lazarus, looking out over the scenery. "The many-headed serpent slain by the master of sea and storm… that was your last gambit. Youkai, gods, beings of myth… they're born from concepts and belief. Those things bind them more than any physical body. Only you could have done this, Aileen."

  "Oi," said Akira. "Don't speak too fast."

  Crack. Crack.

  The frozen earth stirred. Fracture lines spread at their feet, rupturing the concrete. Before their very eyes, thin frigid spires of white grew forth, steam rising from the exposed marrow within as they broke free. Noxious blood oozed from the bones and coalesced, forming the first strands of muscle—mangled, frostbitten black and blue, pale pink flesh hanging in strips from its bones, but existent.

  "Guess killing it don't mean it's dead," muttered Akira.

  "Do you feel that?" said Lazarus.

  Erina did. Mana flowed through the land, drawing itself into the rising field of bones. Steam rose and the clinging ice melted away. Cold and dead as it was, gradually, very gradually, the corpse grew, and the tone of its exposed flesh softened from rigid freezer-burned purple to a raw red.

  "We're in Japan," concluded Erina. "So long as we fight here, the legend of Orochi cannot die."

  They had given all that they could, and then more still. Even after everything, the threat refused to die because it wasn't a physical beast. It was the manifestation of a myth. It couldn't die…

  Unless there was a hero capable of slaying the very idea of a myth.

  "I am the conqueror of all." Darius' foreign incantation cut through the air, and all of them turned. "First Seal, release."

  The black lightning shot down Darius' arms, and then continued to thicken and spread. They become solid dark, rushing out over Darius' figure. The stark white coat and hat stained themselves to deep, perfect black, and then the fractal patterns reformed as glowing, furious white—a total inversion of their standard palette.

  The first motion of his arm, and the fabric of space buckled. Light bent and reality folded in on itself as space vanished between his fingers and every scrap of the mythical dragon. Ice shattered and earth upheaved. When reality snapped back into place and Erina's vision settled, the remains of Orochi were a smoldering pile in front of the gunslinger in black.

  The second motion of his arm, and a great black streak cut through existence. When it vanished the next instant, Orochi was gone without a trace—only a slight dip in the earth where Darius' cut skimmed the ground.

  It was over in two moves, before Orochi could so much as twitch.