"Just as I thought, no one should be able to make me shake unless you are part demon."
I step back away from him, holding my hand to my chest, "What?! I'm not a demon!"
He laughs, "I know your not a demon but you are a Demon Slayer."
"What do you mean, Demon Slayer? I haven't killed anyone."
He nods his head, "I know. But your clan has. Let's talk about this elsewhere. This is something that should be taken lightly here."
Has Orochi turns around, he grabs my wrist and starts to walk somewhere. I look down at his hand. The tone of his skin seemed to be a muted grey like when clouds cover the sky before it rains. It wraps completely around making it seems tiny. From behind him, his shoulder seems broader than most, and his hair midway down his back with his horns stick out half-moons.
We go down a hallway I haven't seen before filled with old paintings of demons, weapons, strange doors and stop in front of a big wooden door. It spans to be four-time bigger than a regular door made of an unusual dark redwood. As it opens, I see tons of books, weapons, pictures hanging from walls.
"What is this place?" I turn around in circles looking at everything in wonder.
From the corner of my eye, he is looking at a bookshelf searching for a book, "It's an old room that holds old knowledge that the majority of the demon world doesn't know about."
Orochi approaches me with an old blue book that has been damaged around the edges with dust down the spine. He hands it to me, "This has everything you need to know about your family or at least most of it. But it does not have the beginning of how it all started. Only the middle of it all."
Examining the book further, it has faded golden vines boarding the cover of the book with a dusty pale lotus flower in the center of it. It was shaped just like the one on my arm as well.
"So this is a book about my family's history?" I look at Orochi with worried eyes, with a book being so heavy without a doubt the feeling that my family has done much more than I had thought originally was a heavier burden on my shoulders.
"Yes, but they don't mention the daughter who started it all." We sat down at a table within the room and he opens the book to a picture of a young woman.
Her face was emotionless and looked like she was holding back a fit of secret anger beneath her eyes. Black sketched hair into a loose ponytail and perfectly drawn face. Her almond-shaped eyes lacked any type of sadness. She seemed like a woman who everyone would fear just because of her stone-faced features.
"She's very beautiful." I saw and looking at her small petite drawn lips and the amazing depth of the sketch giving life into the picture.
"Yes, well she was the worst out of all your ancestors. She started as just a human and no demon abilities. You could say she just merely a girl playing with swords. But she proved everyone wrong.
"Her name was Aiya, she lived in the human world just like you. Lived with her father and her sister in the forest, away from the rest of the world. Every day she would to a nearby tree and stay there for hours upon hours doing nothing but reading." He turns the page to another sketch of her and continues.
"She returned to her home in the late afternoon to find that her father's body mutilated by claw marks and her sister disarrayed all over the house. Aiya ran out of the house to see a demon woman gracefully floating away with her hounds who killed her family. She swore on every demon that she would get revenge.
"She learned how to use a sword from her one friend in town. Once she was old enough, she traveled to the demon world where she would murder, slay, assassinate every single demon she came across. Hoping that it would send a message to the demon who killed her family.
"Years of doing this, she met an old trickster lady who said if she consumed the poison and blood of the demon who killed her family she would be able to kill them. She had to promise that the rest of her family would bare only sons and every next generation would bare the same. Be gifted with the demon blood."
"So are you saying the reason I can punch you with such force is that I have demon blood from Aiya? How come I'm the only daughter to come out of this?"
He flipped the book to the page of all the descriptions of the powers the clan has had over the decades. "Yes, you are the only female to come since then but that isn't a bad thing. Aiya had the same but no one ever compared in strength. It was said she could break everything in a demons' chat with one kick and her swordsmanship was beyond comparison."
"Aiya, had taken up the deal with the trickster?"
"She did, eventually she came face to face with a demon who killed her family and fought the woman. She was sadly killed by the demon when she grew very weak and used up all her energy." He closed the book and looked at me.
"But I don't get how there is a clan when she died. Did she ever have a family?" I wipe the dust off the cover.
"She did at some point find a human male to have a child with. When she was killed, the husband raises their son more than likely by himself. Your family has taken out demons from this world until about a few decades ago. Though the demon part was mostly hidden from the human world and only the sons have none about it. It would make sense for you not to know." He got up and walked up to one of the walls hanging with weapons.
"What do mean 'would make sense', I didn't even know there was a separate world from the human world." I looked to him taking two swords of the wall and walking back over.
"Probably because your the only woman to come out of the curse from the trickster. Within reason, I would be the same as well. You even look like her a little." He places them down on the table in front of me and starts to clean one of them.
I make a face at him, "I don't look that emotionless. Do I?"
He laughs, "No, your quite the opposite. You just have similar facial features. Your face has the same shape, your jaw is small like hers and your lips are the same heart shape."
Huh? I put my fingertips to my lips and look down at the table. Did he just say that? I ignore it asking, "What is the possibility that a possible woman is being born after the curse?"
He furrows his eyebrows as he is cleaning the sword, "The only thing I can think of is something having to do with the deal. If it is and you're the only girl, then that means either your dangerous or you are in danger of someone realizing it you resemble her."
Orochi hands hold out the katana to me in the air. The saya had a lotus flower carved into it, making it known it was owned by my family.
I take it from his grey hands slowly and open to see my eyes reflecting at me against the katana itself. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
"It belongs to you now."
I close it and put it on the table, "Orochi, how do you know all this?"
He stops cleaning the second sword and looks up at me, "Because I used to know her. I was friends with her before she was killed. She didn't trust me very much but I helped her whenever she came to me. It belonged to her and she gave it to me as a token of her thanks one night."
I look at it again, "Orochi, I don't think I can accept it. This seems like your giving it away."
He laughs, "I'm giving it to someone who I think would have a better purpose of it."
Putting it in my lap, I look at the other sword on the table. "What are you doing with that one?"
He holds to put in the air, admiring it. It had a dark red ruby in the center of the hilt. "This used to be mine. Before I decided to put childish things away."
I stay quiet until he is done. We both get up to leave with me carry the large book of my history and the katana in the other hand, leaving the room of unknown knowledge to the hidden shadows which no one should know.