Maken Shao: Demon Sword
Tensions between the United States and China continue to rise. The European Union is deteriorating. I have spent so long looking at life through other peoples’ eyes that I am no longer certain of who I am. I am playing a PS2 game that is a remake of a Dreamcast game, but the perspective has changed. Now I only see things in third person.
I don’t have total control of my body. At first, I can land a three-hit combo and that’s it. It’s okay because that’s all it takes to kill the people coming after me. It’s okay because when I kill, my sword eats the life force of whoever died. With enough life force, I synchronize further with the being that lives in my sword. I learn to thrust my body forward by shifting my weight. Thrusting kills faster and works well in hallways. There are many hallways, so I do it a lot.
My character is a young woman. She looks like a high school student. Her brother moves like a marionette. Her brother is mad because his sister is now comatose. Her image lives in a parallel plane. If she cannot return to her body, she may forget that she exists. In the mean time, I help her transfer her consciousness from person to person.
Most people I find are like human weapons. They have been trained and conditioned since birth to fight in this struggle. Another person I inhabit is just a security guard. None of these people can return their minds to their bodies. They have been permanently severed from their consciousness.
I jump from head to head and land to land. I love the scenery. I’ve seen the Taj Mahal and walked the rainy, neon-reflected streets of Hong Kong. But I can’t continue. I am trapped in a tomb somewhere in Greece. The victims of iron maidens rush after me and squeeze me in. I have tried so many times to let them be, but they always catch me in the end.
I wonder which one of my choices landed me here and what I should have done differently. If I had let that poor security guard alone, I would still have the body of a titan. I probably could have withstood the spikes then. I might’ve been pulled into a completely different corner of the world. Maybe instead of the dungeons of Greece, I would have found myself in a French palace. Maybe if I had stayed at my old job, I wouldn’t have had to spend the past year in the same house I lived in since I was 7 years old. I want to move on.