He, who possesses a fire far hotter than man's could ever be, scorched his soul.
And now, as another tread upon the marble of the shrine that the men of war had collapsed upon, the dragon's body rose and fell with the inhales and exhales of silent energy. His eyes opened. His body twitched. Slowly from his coil, he began to unwind, scales like gold shimmering with the heat of fire carried deep within his heart, listening from beneath for a sign to shift to the surface. It came shortly after, with little hesitation.
It was the yapping of a fox -- running through the shrine's path on nimble paws with a trick in its jaws. Somewhere outside in the frosted March spring rang the plaintive, staccato cry of the creature against the moonlit mist. Against his face - the animal trailed a little paw up to it even now, just to recall - there rested scarlet crescents where rosy, ruby scales met scarred flesh and lingered, and that is where the fox decided to bite and pull and take the scale for itself.
To threaten a fox meant to wage war on the forest it belonged to. But the little creature kept barking and hopping on its heels, peeling scale after scale off of the great beast's head.
The youngest son of the dragon god had been an outcast for years. Upon the mountain he rested in a sacred coil, gods and goddesses alike framing the fire in his eyes as the penultimate catalyst to end the world. He rested there to escape their jeers, the wounds from this messenger fox shooting like arrows into the depths of his heart.
He rose, slowly, and blood coated the glazed marble. Golden ichor leaked from the open wounds to marry the crevices in the hallowed ground beneath the dragon's great form. As his head struggled to raise, the sole sound that echoed was that of the fox's paws fluttering against the tile; it leaped across the threshold of the sacred sanctum, scales in the small beast's muzzle.
Fire moves quickly. It consumes everything in its path to sate its taste for revenge.
The dragon ascended to his full regality, crushing the golden dome of the ceiling that contained him. Claws, like vices, grappled to weakly grasp the crevices of the roof, painting the sky in a fiery orange glow. His massive body was shaking, and yet he pulled the soot-tipped claws up to rest against the bleeding side of his face -- wincing as he did so, threatening the release and billow of the fiery gift he inherited.
From the top, he looked out over his kingdom; a slope of towering pines colored black by the evening sky, pierced only by the dragon's celestial shimmer. Foxes had wound through the trees before, sent by their ruling goddess to claim the dragon's scales for their own. Time after time, he fell victim to their assault, until this night – tonight, he would go to war.
Yellow eyes traced the landscape, falling over every branch and twig until the fox's wily body was seen scampering beneath a thicket of vines and clover.
The dragon inhaled, and then it exhaled.
The fox was dead.
What remained in the smoldering ash of the earth beneath was a flame that shone in scales alone -- twice as fiery in eyes, and heated at the slightest touch. The youngest son took four steps and faltered, noble body weak from expended energy, and found himself stumbling over the edge of the roof tiles -- frame sent rolling to meet the scorched earth until it laid to rest.
In its own strange way, the fox's corpse looked beautiful. Stained with crimson and gold, it lay beneath the light of the moon with the dragon's scales still tightly pressed between its jaws, rigid and cold with the claim of Death's bony hand.
It was soon crushed, however, by the spirit's massive palm.
He rose to the sky, trails of his fire following with every flick of his tail. The fox's body hung limply from his claws, blood staining the tips of the treetops beneath the dragon's flight.
All messenger foxes like that one came from the shrine of the goddess across the canyon. For a tiny fox, the wealth born from obtaining a dragon's scale was enough to give the creature magic of its very own. The goddess herself had made this promise, and it stirred the anger within the dragon's heart with every fox that escaped his grasp with more of his blood in its heart. This night had been different however, for he had finally caught one.
"Inari."
He spoke without moving his mighty jaw, through the space between them alone, in the energy of the mind. As he landed, his claws dug into sunken earth and left divots of their presence behind – a grim reminder.
"Roku."
The building before him – cast in marble, gold, and silver – seemed to speak for itself, with a beautifully radiant voice echoing from deep within the shrine's chambers. It paused for a moment, pensive, before speaking again as if disgusted.
"I see you have slain my messenger."
"Your messenger has stolen from me once again. I have punished it, for taking the scale that does not belong with any fox of yours."
"This is an attack against me, Dragon Spirit. You have slain my child."
The dead animal rolled slowly from the dragon's jaws, laying within a puddle of crimson beneath its bleeding head. As if to mourn, amber eyes glinted with reflections of sadness, before fury replaced the solemn shine. He raised his head and spoke again.
"I have come here to do the same to you."
"You have come to slay me?"
The goddess laughed, a breathy floral sound that was laced with the sweetness of sakura.
"You could not, even if you tried."
"Not to slay you, but to steal from you something you hold dear, just as you have done to me."
Again he straightened himself. Even now, as he watched the moon's caress on the building's rosy roof from his halo of sparkling darkness, the dragon found an ache in his heart; the sting of fury, pain, and most of all – fear. Her voice was everywhere, yet he could not make sense of her words any longer. They had been united once, long ago, and now the spare parts of their history were shattered on hallowed ground.
The blood on his face dripped lazily into his eyes, staining the earth beneath in a wet blanket of gold – his face, scarred and weak, shifted to stare down the long, lantern-lit hallway of the arched entrance. Ornate carvings of foxes and offerings donned every pillar and ledge, the saccharine vapors of the sakura grove within weakening his resolve with each second spent nearby.
"There is nothing you can take from me, Dragon."
He inhaled, hesitantly; and then it all started to burn.
The flames quickly spread from one point to another, following the menacing golden stare of the spirit that oversaw their reach. Hisses from the blaze rang out into the air as the sound of heat consuming its prey became the cry of the waning moon, firelight dyeing the sky red with its rage. The dragon reared on his hind legs, carrying with him a fire unlike any other, scaling the sides of the shrine up to the roof and beyond to circle in the sky. From there, the world was his. He laughed.
"When the spirits cry in anguish, wondering what beast could paint the night sky red, they will look upon me with awe, for I am their god of fire."
Crackles were replaced with cries, as the sound of agony pierced the midnight veil. Billows of black smoke streamed from the windows like tendrils of a wicked thing dwelling within to mask the wailing – all blending in the dragon's mind like notes to a sacred melody. He burned brightly above. He was untouchable, scorching, radiant.
Every mighty creature was untouchable in their mind until the sky gave way to the shine of reality and weariness of truth. As the rain began to fall and the thunder bellowed gently against the breeze, the smoldering shrine became nothing more than a grail worth pursuing, and the desperate cries from within were not familiar – not of a goddess, nor fox.
And so he endured patiently the waning burn of his blaze. Against the dripping mountain face, he stood, painting the rock with hues of bronze blood. A battle for power between a dragon and a fox had forever stained the valley with its vehemence rooted deep in the heart of the mountain itself – from it rose only pain, with the wind carrying notes of agony upwards to meet the ears of the dragon.
The embers descended from the sky to meet his snout.
Among them were the tattered remains of a little girl's kimono.
― « ◈ » ―
"I am innocent."
The dragon stood now as a man before his jury; strong-faced and fiery haired, with a chiseled jaw that could pierce stone and eyes that could burn holes directly through the malevolent soul of any yokai or spirit that dared to cross the red bamboo threshold of the torii.
The Council of Spirits had been only for the most abhorrent of crimes -- the greater Kami being apprehended at once -- and the Kodama, lesser spirits, and others; they would have to wait to view the dragon's sentencing.
"I only returned the pain that the goddess of the fox plagued me with. I did nothing more than that."
As he approached the throne that beckoned him forth, his fiery hair seemed to spark around his horns, gently lighting that golden thread ablaze as if to plead. His eyes flickered to the man seated before him, and then on either side to the countless other spirits nestled in their own seats - horns, tails, ofuda, all cleverly concealed within reason. From above him, silence rang like the clamor of a cacophony, deafening in its emptiness, until a voice bellowed down to him.
"You destroyed the shrine of a goddess, Roku."
A pause, larger than any spirit in the room.
"And with it, you stole the life of a human child who was praying within."
The god who presided over the trial shifted his palm, casting an apparition – foresight. The girl rested beneath the dying embers of the fire's devastation, pale chest still and unmoving as if claimed in Death's embrace.
"A human…"
The ginger-haired man spoke quietly as if touched by the darkness of shadow around his throat. His lips fell open once again, and he continued.
"If the human child was there by no other consequence besides coincidence, then the fault surely cannot rest upon me for taking its life."
"For three days and three nights, as your power consumed the goddess' home, she remained within. Lungs scarred by the thick smoke that charred the sanctum of that shrine, she sat for three days and three nights within the shrine's walls, protecting every offering from harm."
The dragon was wordless, and the weight of five thousand eyes upon his back made it even harder to open his mouth.
"I will give this child new life," spoke the god, from his throne, "And with that life, she will bear an eternal tie to this world, for being the only one selfless enough to sacrifice herself to the valley."
A claw stretched forth, resting gently upon her forehead.
"Now she will wake; and for your selfishness, you will join her. Protect the sacred soul of the human who saved our goddess from devastation, or your gift will be forever extinguished."
The fire spirit frowned; objection would be as foolish as willingly touching the shadow. A copper head lifted ever so slightly to meet the burned body of the human beneath that ruined roof, frail as a flower and twice as delicate – a human with the soul of a spirit.
In her dying heart, lay his Ikigai.