He opened his mouth to reply but from his throat came the loudest sound I’d ever heard. I put my hands to my ears but my head vibrated from the noise. It was like the roar of a dozen jet engines. My eardrums burst and pus shot from my ears. The walls began to crack and one huge slab of concrete fell onto Jame and crushed him. His one eyeball rolled out from under the rubble and across the floor to me. Before my eyes it started to grow a new Captain Jame around it. I could stand it no more. I crawled to the next door and let myself in. Great General Shosen Umiji was asleep in a king-size bed. All around the bed, half asleep but with one of their many eyes on me, was a barrier of oni devils faithful to the demon overlord. He wore nothing and his huge bloated stomach seemed bigger than was humanly possible. His skin was wrinkled, and his toenails and fingernails were bloody. Beside the bed was a drip tube running from a cask of whisky to an artery in his arm. From a distance it appeared he was wearing makeup, but further inspection told me he was sleeping in a white mask with horns and huge fangs. Across the room was a cage and inside were some ten blond European children crammed together, petrified. My every instinct told me I had to kill this general, but I didn’t know how. I had no weapon. I knew the oni were lazy beasts and that they would soon fall asleep if I was patient. Within an hour my suspicions were confirmed. I took a scabbard from one sleeping oni and I leaned over the bed. I needed to be sure this was the general. I tried to remove the mask but it was stuck. I pulled harder and still it would not give. The mask opened its eyes and its mouth drooled blood and it smiled. I happened to look at the bedside table and there I saw my mistake. There was the actual mask, that of a wrinkled old man with a red nose, the impassive face of a military tactician—General Shosen Umiji. That was the mask behind which Shuten Doji dwelled.

“You have no way to destroy me,” said the general. And all the oni came to attention at the sound of his voice. They gathered around me and pulled and pushed and grabbed at my flesh and drew their daggers and I chanced to look up. There was a mirror above the bed like that in the most respectable brothels and I could see myself clearly. I was no longer Hiro Uenobu or Kangen Toshimado. I recognized this new me immediately. I was Minamoto Yorimitsu the warrior and I knew my mission. I looked back at the general and I said,

“I know exactly how to destroy you.”

Epilogue Two

Epilogue Two

Tomorrow I Rise