The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters by Baku Yumemakura Page B

air above his head cutting through a few strands of hair. A pocket of tightly packed air blew in its wake. Iba landed. Now it was Biku’s turn to attack, but Iba threw himself to the ground rolling two, three times, and then leaped into the bushes.
    “Ok,” Iba’s voice sounded from behind the trees, “you’re too good for me.”
    “Something wrong?”
    “I’m bowing out now. I’m done fighting.”
    “Sure,” Biku said, keeping an eye on the undergrowth Iba had jumped through. Iba pushed the grass aside and walked out. He was limping slightly with his right leg. Biku had struck it with the side of his hand as it passed over his head.
    “If you can dodge that kick, I’ve got nothing else.” He had Yajima’s knife in his hand, the knife Biku had been holding. Biku had launched it at Iba as the man had tumbled into the bushes. “This thing came flying in too.”
    “It seems I missed.”
    “It flew right by my nose. Took a few years off.”
    The knife was in the air before he even finished the sentence. The metal-white light hurtled directly toward Biku’s face. Biku casually tipped his head; the knife flew into the darkness behind him.
    “Didn’t think it’d get you,” Iba said, his eyes a narrow line. There was something oddly playful about him despite having clearly thrown the knife with the full intent to kill. Iba crouched down, balancing on his toes. It seemed he still planned to fight.
    Then something happened. The bear, the same one that had left them earlier, returned. It found Hiroshi first. It emerged a few meters ahead of the spot where he was crouched, still nursing his broken arm. His scream sounded like something was ripping his intestines out.
    “B...bear! It’s a fucking bear !” He jumped to his feet squealing. His eyes were stretched wide, almost ready to pop out. Panic had pulled his face taut, legs and arms tangled as he struggled to find balance. Screaming and standing up cost him his life. The bear assumed his frenzy for its own, rearing up tall on its hind legs. It was spectacular, at least 150 kilograms. It swiped its front legs across Hiroshi’s head, cutting his scream dead. There was the sound of flesh and bone being crushed and a scattering of blood and chunks of brain matter. His head had deformed. The top half was gone completely. His death had been instantaneous. The bear roared again. The white, moon-shaped ring of fur around its neck was dyed red with blood. It geared up to charge at its next target, Biku.
    Biku had picked one of the skewers from the ground. He held it in his right hand and in his left, a lit branch from the campfire. He prepared himself, holding the flaming branch toward the advancing creature. The hairs around the bear’s neck bristled. Its body looked to have swollen to double its original size. It charged.
    Just as the bear was about to smash into him, Biku jumped gracefully into the air. The lit branch spun a red spiral of light in the dark. It collided with the trunk of a nearby silver fir, scattering a constellation of fiery motes. Biku somersaulted through the air landing neatly on all fours. The skewer he had in his right hand stuck out from the bear’s left eye, protruding at a sickening angle. Biku had stabbed it into the creature’s eye, using the fire to distract it.
    The bear pawed at its face, howling in a crazed rage. The noise brought Yajima back to consciousness. The bear was right there in front of him. He screamed and got up to run, but the bear responded. Yajima picked up Hiroshi’s fallen knife and hurled it in a desperate attempt to stall the charging beast. It missed by a large margin; in the distance, it struck the shoulder of the woman dressed in black. As the bear attacked, Yajima raised his arms to protect his head from its front legs. His arm thumped to the ground, ripped off at the shoulder.
    There was a roar louder than the enraged howling of the bear, a demented, bestial sound. The roar grew in intensity physically