Trading Company [Death]

Though his frame was enervated and wracked by the inevitable slide into Corruption, I could see it in him still. The emaciated Kurtz showed the marks of partial incubization, in addition to a feverish vitality that burned in his eyes. Even in his ruination, I could not doubt that the man dying on the stretcher had managed to subvert and rule the savages ensnared in the Inari’s cult. They stood about us now, as I looked down on the would be conqueror. The posture and disposition of the natives towards Kurtz was one of deference and near-worship. Lying on the darkened ground and clad in their ragged Zipangu jungle dress, he still retained a clear aura of command. Were it not for the winds of fate, mayhap I would’ve arrived to see him carve out his empire in the husk of the Trading Company. Instead twas he that was the husk, a weak patina of his former glory shielding the dry-rot that even now tore at his soul.

My mind flickered to the gore covered rocks at the cave-in, a sallow arm sticking akimbo from the rubble. The feral cast of the hand, pale and drained of life, left no doubt in my mind. Kurtz’s Inari wouldn’t return from her ill-pitched stronghold in the cave, and the reek of such a powerful mamono upon him hadn’t been enough to incubize him enough to survive the decay gripping his flesh. Somehow he knew it upon seeing me, yet I can say he drew upon the last of his reserves unstintingly to weakly motion towards me. His face blossomed with delirious sweat as he sought to gesture for me to come closer. Even then in his weakness, the mantle of a commander’s bearing clung to him. What could he have been had he not strode so deeply into the dark heart of this Zipangu jungle? Putting such thoughts aside, I crouched to hear his last words, the final mark of the man upon this world.

He spoke in a bare whisper, such that I could barely hear him. Yet I know his words, the final few which took the last of his vitality to give breath. Swimming in his deep dark eyes was a depth of depravity such that even his weakened glance was enough to imply. The primitive rites and taboos of the now dead Inari’s cult had stained him even in his final breaths. I know it to be true, for his final words linger with me to this day. He said, “The ara. The ara.”