Fortress of Lost Worlds by T. C. Rypel

mouth, as supple as a snake. Its nose was a tiny scallop between two beady yellow eyes which Gonji could not help comparing to his own in their angularity. The creature, too, seemed to take note of the similarity when the samurai doffed his sallet and proffered a shallow bow.
    “You remind me of me, funny man,” the demon said in a peculiar high voice. “What land spit you from its shores?”
    Gonji rankled but remained expressionless. “I am Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara, son of the daimyo Sabatake Todohiro of Dai Nihon, the Land of the Gods.”
    The creature laughed derisively. “The Land of the Gods!” it mimicked. “Well you’re in my land now. I’m Bulba, and these are my boulders. That’s my tree over there. And you’re riding on my trail.”
    “I’m riding on the snow,” Gonji countered with mixed pique and amusement. The obese demon’s wheezing punctuated his words with keening whistles between the syllables.
    “The snow’s mine, too!”
    Gonji leaned forward over Tora’s withers. “The snow belongs to the kami of the sky. It’s his carpet for—”
    “Bah!” Bulba scoffed, waving a flabby arm. “That’s empty theosophical piffle! Whatever falls out of his pockets—”
    A loaf of finger jerked upward out of a porky fist.
    “—and lands in my territory—”
    And then downwards, though barely below the horizontal.
    “—becomes mine !”
    Gonji replaced the sallet on his head in martial threat. “Nevertheless, my path lies through your land. Now will you remove your great bulk, or will I have to prod you out of the way?”
    Bulba’s ears deepened in their redness. He sucked in air until it seemed his eyes would pop and, swelling until he was nearly wedged between the great stones, he blew such a blast of wind down into the snow before him that Gonji and Tora were engulfed in a blinding squall that took a minute to settle back to earth.
    Gonji brushed the snow from his beard and caked garb with firm, even strokes. Tora snorted and tossed his head, flicking his ears as he chomped at the bit. All the while the wheezing fat creature cackled in high mirth.
    “Do that again, my fat landlocked flounder,” Gonji warned, “and I’ll burst you such that your entrails will festoon the woods for acres.”
    “Oh— Si?! I’ll bowl you and your stupid horse so flat your sky god will think you’re a new continent!”
    “Ahh, so desu ka? Is that so? Take one more deep breath and I’ll plant so many shafts in your blobby hide that you will—”
    “Mande usted? What did you say?”
    “—that you will look like a burr.”
    “I’ll swallow your horse’s head!”
    “And the shaft of my halberd with it.”
    “You puny little mortal— sniff— I’ll— sniff-sniff… ” Bulba’s tiny nose kept wrinkling in Gonji’s direction. “Sweets,” he said, his yellow eyes widening. “You have sweets !”
    From the tone in his voice, one might have guessed that he’d been betrayed by a friend. Gonji smiled coyly and nodded.
    “Give them to me at once!”
    The samurai shook his head slowly. “First remove your…considerable self from my path.”
    “Bah!” Bulba bounded atop the boulder on Gonji’s right again—the maneuver astonishing, as though his blubber were composed of air pockets—and settled his corpulence on the crest, where it sagged again like melting tallow. He made a gesture with his useless arms that approximated crossing them over his chest. There he sat sulking while Gonji fished a packet from the bag of provisions he’d purchased from the traders.
    “Eat hearty, buta kao —pig face.” The samurai tossed the demon the packet and rode past him, through the boulder gateway.
    “Taffy!” Bulba cried at his departing back. “All I ever get is taffy. Next time you pass through here you best be carrying those French confections—with the soft cen—”
    His words deteriorated into a gooey mumble, and Gonji trotted on into the hollow with the matter of the wind elemental