Yukora the Prisoner part 1

Author's Note: Yukora the Prisoner's inspiration came from an old MTG card of the same name that told a story of a powerful Oni trapped by the souls of 99 monks until their eventual deaths freed him. I took the idea and wrote a story about a powerful Oni queen trapped in a mountain shrine, and the last of the 99's descendants that snuck into the shrine to prove she existed.


When I was very young my grandfather would tell me stories of the old gods. The creatures and spirits that used to exist in our world before their blood mingled with those of mortals, creating the monsters we know of today. I was often overjoyed to hear these tales, of brave heroes fighting for coexistence, of gods powerful enough to topple the nation consorting with mortals and forming bonds. Some of friendship and camaraderie, others of love and devotion that would lead to the birth of new species.

But one tale my grandfather always hammered into me was the story of Yukora the Prisoner. Yukora was one of the first Oni, spawned from the body of the Pitlord Kuro himself. Oni, my grandfather told me, are tame compared to the savage monstrosities they descended from. The Oni ravaged the land, consuming men and women in an orgy of blood, violence, and decadence. They were the undisputed rulers of Zipangu until the gods and goddesses of Zipangu gave their blessing to the heroes of old, vanquishing the monsters and their master into the pits of Numai. The children formed from the union of human and oni eventually became the red, blue, and ushi oni so common today and Zipangu. Ferocious and strong yes, but not nearly as evil, depraved, or monstrous as their forbearers.

In her time, Yukora was not known as the prisoner. She was Yukora the Blood-soaked. Yukora the Devourer of Life, the Snuffer of Hope. The titles go on and on.  Widely believed to be Kuro’s first child and his only daughter, she was without peer. While the other true Oni were eradicated or cast into Numai with their father, Yukora could not be destroyed. Her will was iron, her blood like lava, her gaze brought death to any that stood in her way.  She was the last holdout, the last spark of true untainted evil that could not be removed. She consumed men like cattle, either as food or as sexual sustenance. Her armies of corrupted humans and mortal oni were too strong. Holdup in her fortress of Shizuka on the Sokenazan Mountains, many foolhardy to resist her had their entrails splashed across the walls. Without divine intervention, her domination would have gone unchecked.

Luckily for humanity, my grandfather told me, the monk-priests of Hisoka and the Yamabushi came up with a plan. Waging everything on a last desperate gambit, they assaulted Shizuka with the aid of the great Dragons Yosei and Keiga. They rendered the walls asunder and struck into the thick of the oni’s fortress. Many brave heroes were slain. Out of the 3,000 men that assaulted the fortress, only 99 were left at the end. Yukora was trapped by the grandmaster Hisoka and his friend the Yamabushi Kumano. Yukora still refused to be destroyed. The masters understood that the only way to defeat her was containment. Using the souls of the other 97 present, they bound Yukora in a ritual, her powers fragmented into 99 different pieces. Bereaved of her power, she was stuck in an indestructible body unable to use her magic and barely able to walk, let alone kill. As long as a single member of the 99’s descendants stilled lived, Yukora’s powers would be stifled.  The monks placed her deep inside a mountain shrine, sealed off from the rest of the world. All her titles were stripped away. She was now simply Yukora, the Prisoner.

“Now this is all legend of course, but the reason I tell you this son is we are the last descendants of Kumano. We’ve been charged with watching over the mountain shrine for the 400 years. Many of the other 99 were killed in future wars during the reformation or taken by disease. As far I as I know, we are the last of the 99. When you are old enough, you will take my duties as the keeper of the shrine, like your father was until his accident. “
My grandfather leaned down to me. “But you must promise me, to never ever set foot in that cave. Yukora is still alive, that much I know. If you came into contact with her, I have no idea what she would do.”
“Of course grandfather, I promise!”

Foolish Old man. He should have known better than to trust the word of a capricious youth. I was 15 at the time, in a rebellious phase. I did not want to take over the shrine. I wanted to live a life of grandeur in the city, not stuck in these boondocks over this stupid superstition. Who even knew if Yukora was not simply a myth constructed by the men of Zipangu to scare young men into respecting their elders.
I promised myself I would go into the cave for myself and she was still alive. It was a fool’s errand. I should never have entered that cave.
One night, while my grandfather retired, I snuck out in the night with an old electric lantern and my grandfather’s bike. The shrine’s location was not far, it was the trek into the maw of the cave that scared me the most.  I found the entrance easily enough. As I stole into the darkness, I turned on my light, startling a couple of bats. It was eerily quiet as I walked down that tunnel; it felt like I was entering the maw of a great beast. I could feel a stirring in the air, as though the breath of some massive creature. Yet the wind outside had been totally still.

I walked for what seemed like half an hour before I came into a large expanse in the cave. The entrance was surrounded by two large rocks, fitted with all sorts of purification traps and incantations. Spells that would rend a demon or evil spirit to pieces but leave a human unscathed. I timidly moved past the gatekeepers and into the abyss.
It was dark, but even then I could hear it. The rattling of chains, the breathing of a savage beast unknown to men for hundreds of years. Everything else in the cave was still, save for my own heart beat and those damn chains.

The center of the room was a large circle. Dozens of rocks were laying around in various haphazard formations, with long metallic chains covered in rust secured tightly to each of them. In the middle was the hunched over form of a humanoid creature, with each of the chains trailing to its body. The creature was nude, with the chains rendered into the very flesh itself. All of them were the same rusted, iron blood color, except for the one, glimmering silver one around her neck.

I hadn’t directly cast my light on the creature; I had only seen enough to determine it’s hunched over shadowed form and the position of the chains she was asleep that much I could tell. I would be too if I had nothing to do but spend my time bound in a cave for several hundred years. Something in my brain was screaming for me to go back, to run away and listen to my grandfather’s wishes.
Another, larger part was telling me this was the chance of a lifetime, the chance to converse with a being of legend. She was chained. As long as my grandfather lived, she could not harm me. I shined my light onto her face and a single hushed whisper escaped my voice. “Yukora.”

Her eyes, all three of them, snapped open at the utterance of her name. I was expecting her to roar. To lash out and try and break the chances, to threaten my life. She simply regarded me and spoke.
“Human. I haven’t seen one of you in such a long time. I thought your kind scoured my existence from memory.” Her voice was harsh, like the keening of steel. But after she spoke for a bit I realized it was simply from her vocal chords unused to being used after hundreds of years of silence.
She gave me a bemused look and tilted her head to the side. “Why are you here, little Snack? Have you come to gaze at an oni queen?” She rattled her chains playful. “Well…I am a surely less impressive than if you had seen me in my prime. Still, it’s good to finally see another being. ”She chuckled to herself.
I just stood there my hand over my mouth I couldn’t believe this. An oni queen was speaking to me. Even in my little, idiotic adolescent brain I felt humbled.
She frowned. “Snack, please tell me you can speak. I’ve spent…I honestly can’t remember how many years I’ve been down here. Please, tell me what year is it?”
I cleared my throat. “It’s uhmmm 2011.”
She smiled, revealing a set of razor sharp teeth. “Good. He can speak. I was afraid that of all the luck my visitor would be mute. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”
Her cavalier attitude surprised me. I was expecting something angry and full of bluster and rage. Instead she was toying with me as though she was an older woman and I was a child...Well I suppose that was true. I just wasn’t expecting this much of an age difference.
“Hmmmm, I’ve been here a long long time haven’t I? My how time flies when you are stuck in place. It honestly only feels like I’ve been here a hundred years.” She swayed her head up and down listlessly for a bit before turning those three, golden eyes back on me again. “Snack, if you are just going to sit there in reverent silence and be cowed by the mighty oni queen or whatever it is you are doing, the least you could do is entertain me.”
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t think any of the legend was real. Gramps told me about this place and I…and I”
She pouted. “And what, Snack, you thought your old man was senile and I wasn’t real?” She giggled and rattled her chains again. “Well as you can see I’m very real. Unfortunately, for me. Oh, but I’m rambling. All these years stuck with the sound of silence my only company and now I can’t shut up.”
I laugh. Something about this whole situation just seemed so absurd. She arched an eyebrow at me.
“Ah I’m sorry! It’s just what you said….sound of silence is a song about a people in the future who speak in their heads using telepathy, so the whole world becomes silent…” I prattle for a bit clutching my arm. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She smiles again, as though she’s a cat toying with a mouse. “That’s sounds like an awful lonely world. I’m assuming based on your speech humans still use their tongues to convey thoughts, yes?”
I nod, my face flushed with embarrassment. “You’re very different than what I was expecting an oni queen to be like.”

An annoyed look crosses her face. The still air begins to swirl with energy and the pupils of her eyes turn red. She rises up the best she can, the chains rattling as she stands her nude glory. For the first time I get a good look at her body. Her arms are long and powerful, her hands end in ragged nails that are more akin to claws. Her body is taut and muscular, with skin the color of a dark, midnight purple. She has three, yellow eyes, with the third situated in the middle of her forehead. Each one had a slitted pupil like a reptile . Her hair is ragged, stringy, and dark black. Probably from all these years without sunlight or nutrients. A pair of massive horns curves out of her head and to the sides as though from an ox. Everything about her screams dangerous in my mind, but I can’t help but look at her and for the first time in my life I feel infatuation for another. She’s was too beautiful, even worn down from years of exile.
The air grows menacing as she glares down at me, her voice becoming harsher as she regards me. “And what did you expect, Snack? Did you expect a mighty Oni queen, soaked in blood and covered in scars? Her left hand clutching a still beating heart while her right one is clutched around a young slave’s cock? Snack, I assure you if I could be that again, I would. But I can’t because your thrice damned ancestors took everything from me and stuck me down here.”

I gasped. Oh I fucked up. She knew who I was.

She raised an eyebrow. “Surprised? I know you ,Snack. I’ve known about your presence since you were born. I could even feel you traveling around the tunnel tonight. How do you think I haven’t gone insane from being locked away for hundreds of years? I can feel you. Each and every one of the 99 bound to me before all their lives were extinguished like candles.  It was the sole pittance I had down here until you showed up, my only door into the outside world. Even then it was only small things. Locations. Feelings. Maybe a flash of a loved one or a moment of strong emotion. And then a cry out, as their tiny gossamer lives came to an end.” She chuckled bitterly this time. “I guess that’s a good metaphor for mortal existence though, isn’t it?”
Something welled up in me. Pity. I felt extremely sad in my heart for this creature. Yukora might have been a terrible monster in her prime, but death at her hands came quick. This almost seemed inhuman, leaving someone with thoughts and feelings trapped down here with nothing. It was heart breaking.
I sniffled and a tear came down my cheek. “I’m sorry.”
Her expression softened. “No…I should be apologizing.  You’ve done nothing wrong, Snack.  I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
I rubbed my eyes with my sleeve. “No, I’m sorry that they trapped you down here. It’s not fair. No one deserves this. No one.”

She looked stunned. Heh, I’m still proud of the fact that I was able to shock an Oni Queen into silence.
“I never thought I would hear anyone say that. Sympathy for the devil, I think you mortals call the expression?”
I wiped the tear away. “I meant it.”
She gently shuffled back onto the ground in her original position, her knees under her body and her arms on top of her legs.
She beckoned with a finger. “Snack, come here. I want to give you something for that.”
My legs shuddered. I was too afraid to move.
She chanted and gave a sign in the air. “I promise, on my life as the last true oni and the only daughter of Kuro, I will not hurt you in anyway or bear you ill will. You have my free passage.”
I don’t know what compelled me to believe her, but I walked into the circle and moved to the center where she rested. The chains clattered as I moved over them. She smiled as I knelled down in front of her.
Her hands reached out and moved themselves over my face. I shuddered slightly as I felt her warm caress.  Then she lowered her face next to mine and planted a kiss on my lips. Her warmth flowed into me and I lost my self in her flesh. For a moment it’s just the two of us, the young fool and the demon queen.
After a moment she breaks the kiss and gazes into my eyes as she addresses me. “I like you Snack. You have a lot of compassion in you, to sympathize with an old monster like me. I can at least fill myself with this memory for a couple hundred more years. You don’t need to be involved with something like me. Now go, and don’t look back.
I got up and started to walk out of the cave…but I couldn’t just end it there. She had given me the perfect out, I know. But I couldn’t do it. “No, I’m going to come back and see you again. I promise.”
For a moment I see something in her eyes. Confusion? Surprise? And then her eyes return to that familiar cat like playfulness. “Hmph, as you wish. I look forward to your next visit, my little snack…”

I ran out of the cave and back to the safety of my grandfather’s house. He never knew I left; he was still asleep when I returned. But as I stirred in my sleep, the only thing I could think of was my next chance to visit Yukora.
I didn’t realize then my fate would become forever bound to the Oni Queen because of that night.