View Full Version : Saiketsu (Closed)
Saiketsu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M287VwnnYg&feature=related)
2470
Set after In Her Web She's Caught, (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22018-In-Her-Web-She-s-Caught-(Solo)&highlight=Tenpuru) Tenpuru (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21406-Tenpuru-(Solo)&highlight=Tenpuru) and The Oath of Van Mandelo (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22810-The-Oath-Of-Van-Lawrence-(Closed))
“Never give a sword to a man who can't dance."
Confucius
"We have to take a brief detour," said Arden, gesturing to the sheep trail that wound spidery patterns through the corn fields. It lead away from the safety of the wide and well-travelled road into the unknown.
It had been the first word either he or Lillith had said in over an hour, either companion too absorbed in the scenery that assailed their senses. Their journey had not been a glamorous one, having taken a fishing schooner from Scara Brae to the less illustrious port of Jadet instead of their usual voyage to the heart of Radasanth aboard a merchant vessel. When the smell of cod had finally left their nostrils, they had begun to admire the jasmine woven around the trunks of the great pine trees which lined the road north across the hilly brassock borderlands that marked passage into the south of Akashima.
"I don't like the sound of this detour," Lillith replied, staring down to the outline of a small fishing village that stood out on the flat horizon, splitting the green of the fields from the navy blue sea beyond which was scarred with gentle white waves from the early morning tide.
"The best forge in all of Akashima, if not Corone stands in that village, and I have need of a new blade." He turned from the path and began to stomp along the route through the field, a streak of red against a jade tapestry. "Are you coming?" He said playfully over his shoulder when he realised his sister was stood dumbfounded on the road, unsure wherever or not to follow.
She broke into a skip after him, the pack on her back and the flaps of her trapper hat bouncing in the wind along to her ample bosom. She forgot the purpose of their journey, to go far north to the steppes of the Comb Mountains, where Akashima became a wild and dangerous place, to steal war from the Spirit Warders borne of centuries of hatred and misunderstanding and became an innocent child again. They sloped down towards the village, and both found comfort in the salty air and the joyful sound of children playing in the streets between the bamboo huts and the tall poles laced with ribbon and prayer scrolls.
"What is the name of this place?" Lillith asked, catching up with her brother at long last. He had long legs and a longer stride, and she caught her breath much slower. She looked at him expectantly, and he moved over to allow her to walk by his side.
"In ancient times it was called Yanbo, until they renamed the harbour city to the north in honour of a dying hero. They call it <Hallow> now, if my memory or the memory of my past self recalls." The field gave way as they approached the village, and the dry dirt turned slowly into glistening, unspoilt sand scattered with tufts of dune grass and thorny bushes dotted with red flowers.
"I can certainly see why..." she muttered, snuggling into Blank's left side as they walked past a tumbling fence that marked passage into the village proper. The sound of children laughing had been a ruse, and now they saw the whites of the villager's eyes, they both regretted straying from their destination.
"<Akashima has changed...>" Blank said calmly and quietly, noting their stance and dreary expressions. "<I do not think we will find a strong welcome here Lillith, be on your guard." She nodded up at him reluctantly, and they slowed their advance to something akin to non-threatening. The smell of fear and decay struck their nostrils like hammer-blows, and turned their calm stomachs into violent and stormy seas.
They progressed into the centre of the village, their every step watched by the bedraggled villagers. As was custom in Akashima, a tall totem rose up higher than any of the huts or landmarks, a red standard adorned with a thousand more ribbons and scrolls than the smaller totems on the fringes of Hallow. It was an ominous sign for it to be so laden with messages to the kami, prayers for long lost loved ones and those missing in the fog of war, toil and treachery.
"<I thought Akashima was at peace with its neighbours...>" Lillith asked nervously, her hushed tones dampening her growing fear and suspicion.
Blank could only shake his head in wonderment. They stood at the foot of the totem for several minutes, slowly stepping closer until they could make out a few of the names on the scrolls. They did not reveal the reasons for the disappearances or deaths, and only named affectionate names such as <Loving Mother> and <Father>. The delicate sea breeze swept his hair into a flurry, and the sound of the lengths, sodden with dirt flapped against the back of his neck.
"<Why have you come?>" A voice asked, drawing the pair's attention back along the street they had entered from. The villagers, seven in total had emerged from their doorways and washing lines to form a distant half circle that barred their retreat. Lillith made to speak but Blank held his hand up to stop her being too hasty.
"Steady," he said in heavily accented trade speak. "You know Akashima is resistant to outsiders, and we both look very much like outsiders now..." She relinquished her need to fall into the diplomatic vein and stepped back. The male, even in her homeland, was eternally in possession of charismatic dominion.
"<We are travellers, seeking our fortunes in the Capitol where our distant ancestors once lived>," which, in Blank's mind, was merely a twisted view of a whole hearted truth. Though naturally xenophobic, the Akashiman people held honour and truth in such high esteem, it would be truly foolish to lie to them.
The village centre stood at the heart of three long streets, each converging about the totem. The way they had entered Hallow was primarily laden with huts, residences of the villages and their families. The road leading down to the coast was littered with pebbles and boulders, washed up and smoothed to a shine over the long centuries. At the end, Blank made out several small huts, likely boat houses and smoking sheds, and on the road north towards the heart of the kingdom, there was a larger building, with smoke pouring out from its many chimneys.
"<Our blades are dimmed against the harshness of the mountains, we simply seek to visit your blacksmith, and make use of his business>", again, Blank played delicate games with the truth, and slowly gestured over his shoulder at what could only be the forge of Lou-Genii, the Sword-master.
"You did not mention this was the home of Genii!" Lillith tried to contain her excitement, practically bouncing on her heels from her half-hidden position. She caught Blank's stern glare and silenced herself, before she did them an injustice.
The villagers conversed amongst themselves, a heavy dialect that neither Blank nor Lillith could understand. The larger of the villagers set his long, wet hair behind his ears and stepped forward, making a show of the heavy opal bracelet on his left wrist and the large prayer bead lengths around his muscular, well worked neck. Even people estranged from the customs and traditions of Akashima would have jumped to the conclusion that this was the village chief, Hallow's <omo>.
Lillith recognised the colour of his jewellery and stepped forwards into a low bow, and Blank followed his sister's suit. They had played by his rules of engagement, now it was their turn to play by those of Akashima's citizens. The chief smiled, his curious eyes bright and playful, despite his intimidating appearance and half-rotting sandals. These, Blank noted, were hard working people, fishermen day and night who knew no difference between work and play. They were a long way from the Capitol, and a longer way still from the mystical north.
"They pray to the kami, Lillith, but they have never seen them." He noted over his shoulder, righting himself and holding his hands in front of him to show the chief that he meant no harm.
"We do not need to see the spirits of the gods to know that they are there," the chief said, in perfect trade speak, much to their surprise. When he observed Blank's puzzled expression, he smiled, and the tension fell away. "Forgive the formal welcome, but these are troubled times and you are not of a customary appearance for visitors to these shores."
"Troubled times?" Lillith replied, stepping forwards to take over from Blank's failure. She remained meek and shy, the taint of The Geisha in her still empowering her ubiquity, despite her appearance and plucky smile.
"As outsiders, you will not have heard any doubt. Akashima makes ill of anyone who spreads its troubles into Concordia, worse still if such news reaches Radasanth." He frowned, and waved the rest of the villagers away to continue their daily duties and resume their tea and conversation. The sound of children laughing and playing returned almost instantly, and the façade of officialdom shattered.
He approached them and stretched out both his hands, and they shook in a triangle with warmth and compassion. Only then did he pull a piece of paper from under his robes and present it to Blank.
"<What is this?>" Blank asked, taking it with a bow.
"Open it. Three days ago, the <Komodo> returned and made away with seven men, brazen as the midday sun amidst screams and panic. They nailed this to the totem and promised to return." The chief's voice took on a more serious tone, a stark echo of the rain clouds which hung overhead and the distant gloom that drifted down from the north. The last rays of the morning sun faded behind a cloud, and the colour from Blank's cheeks faded.
Lillith peered at the writing as Blank unfurled the parchment and read it aloud. They both dove into their memories to remember their fables and history lessons from past lives and present, and it dawned on them that Akashima had many more troubles than the petty feuds of the Spirit Warder clans...
"<The Ronin have returned...>" Lillith whispered, her growing fear coming into its own as a sudden wave of dread.
"This is the first we have heard or seen of the Ronin, especially the <Komodo> for nearly thirty years. For them to appear here, now, when the Capitol prepares for its centenary celebrations of the Annulment is not a good omen."
Blank nodded in stark agreement, as he examined the elegant dragon sigil on the parchment, and re-read the simple line of text beneath it.
"<From the ashes, we rise, to reclaim the title and lands taken from us by the false worm.>"
"Seven men died for them to deliver this message."
A drop of rain hit the scroll and Blank rolled it up quickly. He handed it to the chief with another polite bow. The past and the present collided in his mind and he struggled to contain his anger and regret at not having come sooner.
"Will you take tea with me, strangers, and talk with me of this matter?" The chief stepped back and gestured to the larger hut at the end of the street they had entered the village by, and the open door and the flicker of a flame beyond was a welcoming sight to them both.
"<It would be our honour, Omo. My name is Lillith Kazumi.>"
The chief paused for a moment, as if the name was familiar to him.
"<I am Arden Janelle, and indeed, it would be our honour.>"
With the second name the chief smiled and turned to walk towards his home. He returned the scroll to the folds of his clothing and gestured for them to follow. The rain became heavier, and broke out into a squall of sudden downpours, layers upon layers of oceanic vapour. They sprinted up the steps to the front deck and into the cover the canopy of the hut provided, and went about shaking the water from their bodies and clothes.
"Please come in, it would appear that more old enemies and friends are to return to Akashima this day..." he stepped into the hut with an air of knowing that left Lillith and Blank even more puzzled. The smell of smoked fish and jasmine drifted out of the welcoming home, and they stepped inside, removing their guard and Lillith her boots as they did so.
The hut was comprised of a single, large square room. To the left it rose slightly, set apart from the cluttered living space as a shrine and sleeping chamber for the chief, and from the hanging kimono by the small porthole window, his wife, or indeed, wives. The right side of the hut was a long galley kitchen, with many shelves and pots and pans stacked in neat rows by a small basin and a large almost Scara Braen kiln.
"<This is a fine home, Omo,>" Lillith commented.
"Please, it is not often I get to speak in the language of trade, there is no need for pleasantries. My name," he moved to the low table at the centre of the hut and sat with his back to the roaring fireplace set into the wall directly opposite the open door, "Is Ju." He gestured to his left and right at the purple cushions at either end of the table, and Lillith and Blank sat cross legged with eager expressions on their faces.
"You speak it well," Blank said.
"We trade often with Jadet, who are not as good at fishing as we are. For our fish, smoked in spice and oil, we gain material we cannot make ourselves this far south from Tokyun's weaving houses, and of course, we hear news and rumours and gain the subtle delicacies of distant shores."
Ju smiled, and tended to the teapot which was steaming on its stand at the centre of the table. There were four small cups and the instruments of a traditional Akashiman tea ritual by its side. The steam suggested he had either been drinking tea in good company when they had arrived, or that he somehow expected company to arrive that was in need of sustenance. He poured Lillith a cup first, then himself, then Blank.
"It is a pleasure to see Hallow converse with the outside world. We have come to expect distance and isolation from Akashima." Lillith played the political card, and Blank smiled at her openness. If she had been further north, out of the eye of civility that comment might have cost them dearly.
"You both speak Akashiman remarkably well," Ju picked up his cup and sipped it elegantly. "If we are as isolated as you think, how could you speak it so?"
"We...are Akashiman." Blank did not try to spice up the truth this time, leaving the mystery to Ju to unravel.
"Is that so?" He laughed heartily. "You do not look it, though perhaps that is a sign of Akashima's change more than my opinion. Where do you come from, Spirit Warder?"
He is playing a clever game, thought Blank, as he realised why the chief had sounded all knowing when they had entered the hut. Despite centuries of non-appearance and decades of exile, it would appear that another Janelle had returned to Akashima long before he had.
"I am Spirit Warder only by name, and only through the mists of time Ju. My family, or what is left of it was once people of the Comb Mountains that is true. Lillith too, is of that resplendence."
Ju nodded in agreement and drank more tea. As he nodded, he seemed odd at ease about something. Blank could understand how one might be troubled by the re-appearance of the Ronin, but the Spirit Warders were part of the fabric of life in all parts of Akashima, they were an accepted, welcomed tradition.
"Something tells me you have heard something in recent days that we have not?" He raised an eyebrow questioningly, and let a draft of the tea, thick, sweet and laced with aniseed warm his well-travelled body of its woes.
"A man by the name of Janelle came through Hallow, not six months ago now I believe."
Blank drew the natural conclusion that the man was his father.
"Red hair, regal armour, a walking cane?" Blank questioned.
Ju nodded, and stood with a swift rising. He walked to the kitchen side of the hut and started to prepare a small platter of fish and bread and soft cheese. Blank and Lillith stared at one another with a stern glance and realised that their journey to the north would not be as easy as they had hoped.
"Do you like Nashi?" Ju said suddenly, brandishing small pears up to the light of the fire.
"Yes!" Lillith squealed, as if she were a school girl deprived of sweets for a long winter of discipline.
Ju set several onto the platter and walked back to the table. Blank waited for him to answer in the course of his preparations, knowing it to be rude to repeat himself or press for an answer if the man was not ready to give it. He eyed the food eagerly, and helped him slide the tea set to one side so that the clay platter could rest at the centre of the table.
"Please, help yourselves, you must be hungry from your travels at sea." He waved his busy hands over the food and Lillith darted a hand out to the ripe, succulent fruit.
She bit into it eagerly and instantly flashed back a century to when she had been a meiko proper in the Capitol. She forsook the traditional method of eating it, and relished the crisp, hard skin alongside the subtleties of its smoky and sweet interior. Ju chuckled at her eagerness, and took for himself a piece of smoked fish and ate it piecemeal between the last of his tea.
Blank feigned to eat for a moment longer, until Ju turned to him and stopped chewing. "That sounds like him. Is he known to you?"
Blank nodded, "He is Magnarion Janelle, my father - though it pains me to admit it."
Ju nodded with understanding, and set his cup down on the table with a delicate movement. Family matters, and certainly, family feuds were an integral part of Akashiman history. Even in peaceful times, following the Annulment of the Samurai and the settling of democracy and religion into the homes of every Akashiman citizen, there was never a time when one relative or another sparred with someone that he perceived to have wronged him.
"Even this far south from the steppes of the Comb, we know of the feud. The Janelle, the Blood Weavers, and the Kazumi," he gestured politely to Lillith, who was content to listen and chew furiously through her late breakfast "the Keeper of the Greater Oni is known in our myths and our fire songs."
"You know of the feud, even after three hundred years?" Blank seemed somewhat amazed at this, but felt satisfied enough to take a piece of fish for himself and bite into it. It was a salty and coarse product, but the after taste and subtle aroma of spice and coconut surprised and nourished him.
"Legends and ideas, unlike the weakness of a man's flesh, are fortunate enough to never die." Ju recited the parable as if he were reading from scripture, and it was then that Blank realised that Ju himself had been a sage once, and the beads on his wrists and about his neck were old symbols of his former life.
"<Scribe?>" Blank said with a simple expression on his face.
Ju nodded. "Which is why the return of the <Komodo> troubles me...and why I must ask a favour of you both?"
"For such hospitality," Lillith replied, amid juicy mouthfuls, "we will do anything!" Blank nodded in agreement, happy to see his sister happy after their precarious journey over the narrow sea. He began to feel calm and content, though he wasn't sure wherever or not it was the tea and fish affecting his body or the smoky and warm interior of Ju's hut.
Ju nodded thankfully, and he stood. "I would ask of you only to deliver a message, a simple enough task I should imagine?" He did not wait for an answer, and walked to the sleeping half of his hut. He skipped up the four steps and knelt by the futon. He pulled a scroll tube out from under the mattress and returned with a gait to his step to the table. He pulled the scroll from his clothing and slipped it into the leather cylinder, and pushed the cork stopper in with force.
"To go north you must go through Capitol City, and there this scroll must go." He held it at arm's length by the strap to Lillith, who put down the core of the pear to take it with a bow of acceptance.
"To whom do we deliver it?" She said, setting it on the table beside her tea.
"The Minister for Trade will know me by name, and he will escalate it through the much maligned democratic process up to the military council." Ju sat cross legged in his place of office and took off his prayer beads and bracelets. He shook the morning's work from his body and poured them all more tea.
"You sound sceptical Ju." Blank smiled.
"Change is one thing, Arden, but sometimes, the ways of the past are better. Though the Samurai were exiled following the Annulment, I wish the democratic process had made room for their ways. Now we are left with our own errors, and the process of asking for aid will be too long to save us."
Lillith froze mid bite, and looked at Blank sceptically. "Save you?"
"I studied the history of the Samurai and the ways of the Ronin war bands after the Annulment. They took seven men, and promised to return. A man for every cycle of the moon until they come for more blood, and it has been three moons already. Even if you ride as swift as the wind, by the time the city guard are marshalled, they shall have returned, and taken more lives in the name of their <Komodo>." Ju let the enthusiasm drain from his body and the hut fell into hazy silence.
"Then we shall ride faster than the wind!" Lillith cried, suddenly roused to help.
Blank shook his head, "We can deliver the message, Ju, but if the Ronin are going to return, should you not abandon Hallow and take refuge in Capitol, or even the northern villages where you will be better protected?"
Ju shook his head. "I retired from the life of a scribe to live a life of penance and hard work here in the fringes of Akashima for a reason, Arden. The sea is my home, and many here would agree. A few left, by all means, many days ago. We that remain are barnacles clinging to a sinking ship."
Lillith sighed, admiring the man's determination but not the outcome that likely awaited them. She had remained too far in the north during her past lives to have ever encountered the Samurai, or have been partial to the political turmoil that surrounded the war following the Emperor's death and their subsequent disbandment. Somehow however, she did not imagine the Ronin to be polite raiders and takers of lives.
"You are a brave man, Ju, and you can rest easily with this in our hands." She prodded the tube and picked up a piece of fish to wash down the bitter after taste of the pear. The steaming tea was stronger in its second draught, and she began to feel warm and sleepy with every subsequent sip.
Ju could only smile, but he still seemed troubled. He looked up at the kimono by the window and shook his head. "It is too late for me, and the Hallow. But, perhaps, with your aid, the rest of Akashima can steel itself against the coming conflict."
Blank nodded in agreement. In war, it was always those on the fringes of society that suffered, but through martyrdom, the people of Hallow would swim with the kami in the river of life, and shine as beacons of hope for the people of the north to rally against an enemy they would not see coming until it was too late.
"But enough of me," Ju smiled, drawing his attention back to the table. He picked up another piece of fish and took it eagerly with some of the soft cheese. He layered it onto a hunk of rye bread, mixed with falafel acquired from the traders from Jadet and chewed it eagerly. "Why do you seek the Master Swordsman, if you are to go north where stranger weapons lie in temples old and grand?"
Blank admired Ju's candour for a moment, then leant back on his left palm to relax.
"The sword I require can only be crafted by Genii's hands, and by all the providence of his experience."
"He is a legend, after all," Lillith continued, nodding in appreciation for the man's talent. She watched Ju prepare his food and decided to try it for herself, only with less cheese and a sprinkle of sea salt pinched from the small seasoning pots decorated with red kanji mariner rhymes.
"Though that is true enough, I am afraid your journey has been wasted in that regard." Ju polished off the last of his food and rubbed his stomach contently. He downed the last of his tea before picking up the pot, he shook it and frowned. "A disappointment, like an empty vessel when the mouth is still parched."
Blank chuckled, "Why so, Ju, is Genii busy?"
"Busy?" Ju stood, and walked idly to the basin to refill the pot with the standing water he had collected from a nearby well by the early light of the dawn. "In a way, yes, he is, but not." He set the pot onto the grille over the fire with careful fingers and returned to the table. Blank watched him sit, and picked up on a gait to his movements he had not noticed when they had been introduced.
"I am sorry, but I do not understand." Lillith lowered her bread, her spine tingling with nerves.
"Genii has gone to Capitol, but fear not, he shall be back by sunrise."
"Then why does the forge still spew smoke?" Lillith asked cautiously. The plumes of thick ash had been visible for miles around Hallow, and it was one of the first things that greeted them on the horizon when they had departed Jadet on the north road.
"Hei-wu, Genii's wife remains in the village to keep the fires stoked. He has been very kind in teaching some of us basic skills to repair our fishing equipment when it breaks and he is not here to tend to our...needs."
Blank nodded with appreciation and satisfaction at Ju's answer, but glanced over his shoulder at the hanging kimono.
"What of your wife, Ju?"
Lillith darted Arden a furious look, but resigned herself to flinching at the tension his question created. Ju tried to smile politely, but pointed to the kimono openly.
"She, unfortunately, was one of the first to fall beneath the blades of the <Komodo>...I resisted their raid, and for my bravery, or foolishness, they took her head and left her body to rot in the square outside." He pointed through the doorway and with a gruff clearing of his throat, stood once more to reclaim the pot from the fire.
Blank and Lillith stared out through the opening at the heavy lines of rain as the after squall continued into a heavy, sea front rain storm. They picture the scene, and realise why the road had been dusty and free of debris...someone, or something, had cleared away many corpses in a bid to remove the memories of what had happened here.
"The rains will wash away her blood, and the blood of those other souls who fell to the katana of the outriders. We however we shall thrive to see another day." Ju returned to the table and set the steaming pot onto its stand.
Lillith, content with the sorrow in the air pushed herself away from the table and sat cross legged on the small raised edge of the kitchen side of the hut. She used the leverage between bamboo slat and carpet to create a small bowl in her legs. With an inquisitive smirk, she held her hands up into the air. Though she was now a true daughter of Scara Brae the memory of her past lives coarse through her veins, and from The Aria, a song formed that flowed freely into being as swiftly and hauntingly as the ghostly shamisen did.
Blank smiled, and nodded at his sister for her to continue. The song played a harmony of elegant ties gathering threads of goodbye, and Ju, unable to contain the surprise, let a single tear roll down his left cheek.
"<Arigato (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2QgFgBlBpA&feature=related)>," Blank said softly, sitting upright to take one of the pears from the platter. He unsheathed Gerhard and cut the fruit in half, offering the first to Ju before biting into the second.
"You are both too kind, <Arden-san>, <Lillith-sama>, I cannot thank you enough." Overwhelmed with emotion, the chief of Hallow poured them all a fresh cup of tea, and listened with all the joy of the twelve kami gods to Lillith's music. He, like all the people of Akashima had been brought up listening or humming the old songs. He had not heard this particular requiem to the dead for almost a decade, and the memories of his time in the Capitol came flooding back.
Lillith clapped and sent the instrument back into the folds of the troupe's other world when she had finished and bowed. Ju clapped with a polite applause, but then let the hut fall into awkward silence. She slithered back to the table and took another draught of the steaming hot tea. The leaves had been re-used, as was customary for a long engagement at a host's table, and by now the intense aroma had reached a maturity she had not been fortunate enough to taste for years. Scara Braen noble women enjoyed tea, but it was sickly with cow's milk and too much sugar.
"It is a shame..."
Blank looked up from the flames of the fire at the chief with a puzzled look. They all seemed dozy and half asleep, content in one another's company.
"It is a shame that my village must squander its life away on the seas...unable to provide for its families...whilst those in the city make countless thousands and live in jade palaces!" An edge of anger grew in the fisherman's voice, and he took a deep breath to swell up his chest.
Blank reached instinctively for the hilt of his sword, and Lillith swallowed the rising fear from her throat.
"Lillith..." Blank whispered, "We have taken up Ju's time long enough..." He gestured to the door, and they rose very quickly, bowed politely, and skipped out onto the porch.
What they saw drew blood from their veins with icy waves of terror. Behind them, Ju looked up from his momentary insanity and rose slowly, as if pulled upright on ghostly strings and not on his own volition. A fire flickered into life in his eyes, white spheres of burning flame surrounded by a crimson corona.
The samurai had once been a noble order clad in traditional garb and bound to the Bushido, the way of the sword. Honour and form were part of their way, and they guarded Akashima without fail for many centuries. As with all powerful men they came to crave even more power, and so when they became a dynasty, and the people of Akashima rejected their rule in favour of diplomacy, the Samurai took it upon themselves to enact a state of political control. They fought to ensure that peace was maintained and the enemies of the Eastern kingdom did not take advantage of what they perceived to be a weakness.
"Ronin..." Blank said glumly, unsheathing his blade without hesitation. He stepped onto the first step down to the muddy village square and held up a hand as if to suggest nobody take any hasty actions.
The Emperor had outlawed the Samurai, and disbanded their power and cast them out of Capitol City after a long period of civil war. He had called upon the Spirit Warder clans to remove the blessings of the kami the samurai had enjoyed, and the swordsmen found themselves mortal, without charisma and scattered to the winds. Their leader fell on a foreign field, and they all but vanished for a century into the mists of time.
The Janelle and the Kazumi had been part of that treachery, and Blank remembered his past life's part in the ritual of sundering. He swallowed his regret like a thick ichor draught and took the Rheilhand into both of his steady hands. Lillith followed suit by unsheathing her tanto, but remained on the top of the steps safe behind her brother.
"It would appear the <Komodo> did not leave the village after all..." she said with a shaking voice.
The three figures approaching the hut with slow, inhuman steps had once been those shining figures of salvation the people of Akashima had called the <Kami-Touched>. Now, their black armour was emblazoned with red claw marks and a swirling red dragon on their chest plates, and they held a katana in their left hands and a wakizashi in their right.
"Do not fret to end their lives, Lillith. Though human once, they have long abandoned their humanity to the will of the oni who possess them..." Blank looked over his shoulder to re-assure his sister, but then saw Ju approaching from behind with equal malefic and equally cankerous movements.
"Look out!" He pointed frantically, and Lillith turned on a quick-footed heel just in time to bring her weapon up to block Ju's fist. The blade slipped between his knuckles without resistance, and he stumbled back spattered with his own blood. "Kill him!" Blank roared, before leaping from the top step and landing with a satisfying squelch in the two inch deep mud. He ran forwards to enact the End to the fiery spirits that consumed the hearts of the Ronin.
The Rheilhand rose into the ready guard of the first Ronin. Rain splashed away from the sparks as the deep resonating energy of the oni fuelled the once human hand's resistance. Before he could retaliate, Blank brought his blade back and thrust it forwards, it's curved tip tucking into the chest plate at the centre of the dragon emblem.
"<To the spirit realm rise!" He roared, his free hand curving up behind his back into a duellist stance. The creature replied only with a monstrous guttural roar, it's eyes glowing brighter and more malefic as it leant forwards to step into a counter attack.
Their blades clashed once more, and it was only with prehensile reflexes that Blank brought his hand down to catch the hand that bore the wakizashi upwards into his hip. If he had been less careful, he would have been felled there and then, ended and rent from existence by the very things he had sworn a century ago to hunt.
"<Let their souls rest!>" He challenged.
"<They rest already, Janelle>" the creature spoke, but without words. The echo rolled around Blank's mind, and his concentration wavered for just enough for the Ronin to push into their deadlock.
Blank leapt backwards, the katana cutting through where he had been moments before. His bare feet splashed into the now fluid mud as the rain continued to pour, nature's advance oblivious to the toils of men.
"<Who are you?>" He cocked his head, taking the three Ronin into his vision once more. The other two encircled him slowly, swords readied but drawing no closer as they formed a triangle around their prey.
"<What do you want with Hallow?>" He tried to remain composed as he settled his blade into the curve of his left hip in a reverse hold. Rain ran down it's blade and trickled in a little swell from its tip, and he craned his neck to allow a better cover of the chieftain's hut. As long as he heard the clash of tanto against flesh and steel, he did not have to break his stance and turn his back onto a greater enemy.
"<We wanted. The Komodo already has it!>" All at once the Ronin lunged, blades all held ritually overhead and descending in unison into a triple sided downward strike.
Blank thought for a moment, which seemed to drag seconds into hours, before he did what he did second best.
He vanished.
Lillith's stance shifted as she stepped into the hut, pressing the attack on the man she had thanked for his hospitality and the gift of sweet pears and sweeter tea. Her opening blow had tethered pain to his wrist, but he made no further display of being injured. He wavered backwards, as if the emotions of the human host had attacked the spirit which possessed him, and almost stumbled and fell over the table.
"Ju!" She shouted, innocence and hope driving her cry. "<Can you hear me, Ju?>" Her brow sodden with urgent perspiration and her hair wet with the brief exposure to the heavy downpour on the patio, she took on the look of a desperate dog.
The chieftain righted himself slowly, with inhuman movements and snapping joints.
"No...<Ju>, here." It mumbled, eyes aglow but with a human edge to its harrowing voice.
Though Blank had insisted the Oni had taken them over fully, Lillith remained hopeful, and not as ready to end the man's life as her brother was. She stepped forwards slowly, legs parted in case he retaliated with a bull rush as her instincts suggested, and held out a delicate hand towards his shaking shoulder.
"<Ju...It's me...Lillith>"
The moment her finger touched his warm skin, he buckled, as if he had been barraged by a battering ram at the height of a siege.
"No!" He cowered by the table, leaning into it and knocking the tea set and cups flying across the bamboo matting.
"<Ju! It's okay, I mean you no harm.>" She stooped in and knelt by his side, half offering to embrace him with a hug.
"<But I wish you harm...Kazumi.>"
He turned his head to look into her eyes with his own pallid orbs of fire, and smiled, quite madly, as he reached with both well laboured hands for her neck.
She managed a whimper and a short scream before she felt the life being squeezed out of her.
Blue ribbons of light wavered through the air and wrapped themselves mischievously around the clashing blades of the Ronin. Their strikes had converged perfectly where their target had been, and they rested on one another's weight before they flashed back to a defensive guard. None of them expressed shock or concern, they simply waited with shifting eyes for their prey to return.
They had seen this magic before, long ago.
A drum beat broke the monotony of the rain for a second and then a second knot of ribbons materialised.
"<Die!>" The swordsman roared as he reformed in the exact same position he had been moments before, sword rising up into the devilish mask of the Ronin in front of him.
The satisfying crack of a blade into the ceremonial armour was followed with a hiss and a cry, but no sooner than the blood had started to run down Blank's sword, he withdrew it and ducked.
A katana crossed through where his neck had been, and he rolled backwards with a neat tuck. When he rose, he pounced back with two leaps, sodden with mud soon washed clean as the rain grew heavier and heavier. The mist like spray came down full force, and out at sea, the grey over cast clouds had been replaced with blackened skies that promised a heavy catch the following morning.
Blank snarled, his teeth a few millimetres longer, his rage growing by the second. His chest beat loudly and his arms were flexed as if the muscles struggled to contain their excitement and struggled to keep the silver blade at his side.
"<No rest shall come to these soul's hearts whilst you or your kin live.>" The Ronin on the right of Blank turned his head as his comrade fell lifelessly to the floor, the fire in its eyes fading and its weapons falling into the mud along with its hatred and spite. "<We are legion, we spirits dire. You are flesh, bound to honour.>"
"Times change," Blank spat, refusing to maintain the charade that Akashiman was the only way to discourse with the gods.
The two remaining Ronin turned with heavy movements, the rain soaking through their armour to make their limbs ache beneath the extra weight, even with their super natural strength. Each sheathed their wakizashi in unison and took their katana into both hands.
He smiled eagerly, the scent of blood inciting a riot in his senses. With a great burst of speed and a welling strength behind his sword's advance he ran to his right towards the first of the Ronin. With a swing he brought his blade round from the right straight into the waiting blade.
Lillith felt weak.
"<Ju...>" she spluttered, her body lifeless as he lifted her up by her nape. Her arms managed two feeble flails before he strengthened his grip.
Lillith felt desperate, betrayed, and sodden with humility.
"<Die!>" The spirit roared without conviction.
The flicker of the fire had long gone and in the dying light the hut took on a dark aura of desperation. Lillith looked into Ju's daemonic eyes as she felt the life begin to fade from her, clinging to the illumination like a moth to a flame.
I must live, she said in her mind. She imagined in that moment the rolling mercury sea of The Aria. It sang to her, a silhouette of its former glory but still bright and uplifting. Memories flashed before her eyes of all her lives in Akashima, from the fisherman's hut to the Spirit Warder's war with Heaven itself, she remembered.
"<Not today,>" she whispered.
A strength filled her, one not her own and one that would not be welcomed when it's source dawned on her days later. She drove both tanto upwards into the nearest point of the chieftain's body that she could reach, and felt herself fall as the oni felt what pain, what the very essence of mortality was.
"<Not ever," she added, her knees shaking and her hands instinctively pulling up to her neck to massage her larynx to life. The Chieftain stumbled back and fell over the table proper, a clatter and a crash echoing about the hut and out into the pall. The blood felt warm and smelt sickening, and stained Lillith's fingers and neck as she fought to heal her injuries.
She had to regain control of her own body before the creature rose and came at her once more with a thousand years of loathing.
"<Not whilst the Oni walk the lands...>"
The Ronin almost looked surprised at the force of Blank's strike. Though he turned his blade to deflect the incoming attack, it fell back and his limbs gave way much more than expected. With deft movement and speed, Blank pulled his blade back, and cut it into the wavering defence again and again and a fourth time.
Before the creature had time to respond he withdrew the blade once more and thrust it forwards. Applying his anger with the same haste and accuracy that had ended the afterlife of the first Ronin he returned each incoming blow to it's master’s heels to face a punishment far worse than death.
The remaining Ronin stepped in swiftly and knocked the Rheilhand down, its weight forcing the silent swordsman's blade deep into the mud.
"<People, however, change quicker>" Blank gritted his teeth, and after a brief and futile attempt to pull his blade up against the rigid determination of his attacker he let his weapon go, and felt the leather of its hilt slip through his fingers.
It made a momentary channel in the mud before fading from view, but the Ronin stumbled at the sudden giving way and Blank took the time to step clear of danger.
He also took the time to unsheathe his twin-bladed daggers, and step into the Ronin's unguarded right side to deliver another message to his oppressors.
"<Tell the Komodo I will do to him what I did to the Jurugumo," he snarled, before turning the pronged blade clockwise, releasing the tension in the wound and allowing the remnants of blood in the Ronin’s corpse to flow down the steel and into the waiting vial.
Blank's fangs and fever grew further still as he pushed with a brutish movement the corpse from his blade. It's black armour bloodied, it's inner fire extinguished, it became another tally on a maddened man's conscious.
"<The Janelle walk the lands once more,>" he turned with a rasp to the final swordsmen, and span his daggers as if they were mere chopsticks.
The Ronin advanced quickly, and Blank crossed his blades to temper the rage.
Lillith's legs shook as she pushed herself feebly upright. It was a struggle, like climbing a snow crested peak in the dead of night. Eventually she rose triumphant and stood shaking and angered beyond all the measure at the feeble limits of her body and soul. Akashima was not weak, so she would be strong.
Blood ran down her fingertips and dripped in little pellets of rain to the washed and worn floor of Ju's hut. The joy of their meeting and the elegant conversation was long gone, washed away by the rain and the clash of steel. Treachery, as many people in this harsh world found out sooner or later came to taint even the happiest of places.
"Why..." she mumbled, confused and delirious under the strain of the adrenaline in her veins.
On their travels to port of Jadet, Blank and Lillith had talked for hours about the legends of the Kami and the Oni. They had heard whispers of dark creatures, seen it with their own eyes in confrontation with the Jurugumo herself...but to ride so brazenly under the sun, to take the lives of innocent villagers? She could not understand or even begin to comprehend the reasons.
"Because," the Oni said, his voice returning with full and vibrant terror. "Our time is now." He turned his head and Lillith flinched as his spine snapped. The spirit drove Ju's body beyond its physical confines, seemingly forgetting it had occupied a mortal frame.
"Your time is up, Oni, I will not suffer you to live." Her cold, calculated application of judgement forced her to step forwards and bring her blades up over her head.
Ju simply smiled, his teeth stained with blood and his hands contorted and splayed into misshapen supports. The blood from the body's injuries poured freely out over the hut's floor, staining the bamboo matting a dark red that congealed far quicker than it normally would. The electrifying presence in the air blew a fell and chill wind through the windows and open door, and Lillith felt her spine tingle with fever and sickness and revulsion as she dropped her arms and drove her tanto into Ju's neck.
The sound reminded her of a knife cutting into a ripened Redden, sluice like and wet with moisture. Red gobbets hit her in the face, and her breath burst into sporadic gasps of shock.
Ju fell sideward from her blade, his head cracking against the edge of the small black wood table with a final jolt.
The light in his eyes vanished, and he was human, and very much mortal once more.
Blank’s guard gave way almost as soon as the katana crashed down into it. With a grunt he tucked his arms close to his chest to take the weight, but felt his weakness and fatigue let him down. With a sickening descent the edge of the blade pushed his daggers up close. He leant to one side to pull his face from the advance of the weapon.
It struck his right collarbone instead, cutting the skin without resistance and with a smile that was both calamitous and wild; the Ronin pulled the katana down, cutting deep and dragging Blank with a raking motion to his knees.
He splashed into the mud and let his daggers fall into the sluice, to be dragged down into the heavy rainfall and salty flow alongside his sword.
The Ronin stared for a moment, before stepping backwards to bring his blade ritualistically about in a full-circle. It rose over it's scowling face. It hovered in both hands, like an executioner’s vicious blade. Blank looked up at it deliriously and resigned himself to his fate with an all knowing smile.
A normal injury he could overcome with ease, but a death blow like the one that sent his right arm to sleep and bled his life-force onto the hearth of his homeland was too much. His eyesight was already blurred, his heart slow, the taste of iron on the tip of his tongue fading from reach even as he thought about his failures.
“<The Komodo sends his regards>” the Ronin said, as if its human host had broken through for just long enough to speak plainly and without vibrancy.
The katana fell with a rush of air, tempered by the heavy rain and the darkened skies that threatened to erupt into a violent storm at any moment.
Blank leant his head back and raised slightly upwards, arms arced and back bent as if to openly greet his maker.
“I hear them freely,” were his last words as the razor edge cut into the shoulder wound. It cleaved through his right side down through his chest and severed his arm clean from his body.
Somewhere in his soul, a spark of red fire grew into a flame.
Lillith stepped out onto the porch of the hut, expecting to see her brother triumphant and standing over three corpses with his blade singing to the stars in a swathe of blood. What she saw instead would have shocked her, if it were not for the lethargy and sickness she already felt at having watched Ju fall.
The chieftain’s blood still smothered her chest, and stained her hands with an innocent kill. She had flashbacks of his hospitality and those first few moments of greeting, of tea and pears and pejoratives.
Blank’s body was half entombed in the mud, covered in a red glaze as the rain set blood adrift in spiral patterns in the flow. The last of the Ronin stood over him, gloating, crying in a dialect Lillith could not understand and shaking it’s blade to the skies.
“Arden…” she whispered, subconsciously spinning her blade in her fingertips.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the small vial of blood Blank had rolled to her under the table as they had made their hasty exit from the tea service, and suddenly, the pieces of a very complicated puzzle started to come together. Lillith could not have known how Blank had known they were to be attacked, nor did she understand how he had foreseen it, but he had taken the precaution of ensuring their endeavour to reach the relative safety of Capitol City was not without failure.
With her eyes set on the Ronin, she leapt from the steps of the hut and landed with her boots already lifting her forwards into a run.
“<Go back to the ash lands, back to the fires, back to the realm beyond realms!” She screamed defiantly, blades held in reverse and wind and rain crashing against her skin. She keened her eyes so that she was not blinded by the pathetic fallacy of weather, and closed the gap quickly despite the quicksand effect of the mud.
The Ronin turned slowly to watch the woman advance and cackled maniacally. He turned on a heel and levelled his blade at her, holding it in one hand as he snarled. Like the others, it wore a mask, twisted into a snarling demon’s face and forged in black iron in a dirty forge.
Lillith Kazumi did not need to ask herself permission to forgive her coming deeds. Though doubt still tinged the edges of her mind over her killing in the hut, a thought that would reside in the recesses of her consciousness for many months, she held no compunction at all about driving tanto, kunai and heel into every weak point in the black armour, into every edifice of the creature’s soul and the man who had let the rage of an aeon into his heart.
She stepped into the Ronin’s guard with speed and finesse and tallied four strikes against the katana. The hollow echo rang out across Hallow’s now desolate square. As the Oni moved to retaliate, hoping to cut her down with one fell stroke sh leapt to one side with a backflip. Her hands planting briefly into the mud to pull free her weapons without struggle.
The Ronin found himself beset once more before he even turned to level his sword at her, and the fourth strike of her second assault brought a tanto from her hair into the rain. It shot up in between the gap between breastplate and shoulder guard. She felt a satisfying rush of adrenaline as she pushed and the thin blade cut into flesh. It drove itself as if it were eager to spill blood into the joint. She twisted it's cold grip twice as she roared at the creature’s face.
A punch to her stomach ended her momentary victory, as the Ronin pulled his shoulder back and arced under her exposed guard to send her stumbling backwards.
An inner fire rose in Lillith’s heart, a sudden swell of energy and rage that she did not know she possessed. She opened her eyes, and the mud seemed to glow purple and vermillion, and brought her back upright and straight and her gaze back to the war mask of the Ronin.
She heard whispers, scrabbling limbs and cackling.
The Jurugumo’s poison.
That was how Blank had seen them coming, she thought. His spirit is touched by the Oni through his magic. She felt sick, but was driven forwards under a new master’s touch, as if she were but a puppet on web strings being used as a pawn.
“<My mistress sleeps, but through me she weeps!>” She cried as she pushed aside the katana. She imagined the creature’s look of surprise as her tanto drove itself into the wound and prized the armour plates further apart. She felt it touch bone, and turned it with a spin in her palm.
His pain mirrored hers, and though she felt sick at the thought of being controlled, of the poison in her burning through her veins, the act brought her satisfaction vengeance and relief.
“<The Komodo will come, and sweep away these lands,>” it whispered as it fell to its knee, a last sentence before both Lillith’s blades spiralled upwards, then down in symmetrical angles into the rear of the neck. With a satisfying noise, they pierced the rear guard of its samurai helm with a crunch of metal and a splash of rain.
She cupped the lifeless body closer, like a confiding relative comforting a weeping widow, before she kicked it back and watched its lifeless eyes glug into the mud.
For a while she let the poison settle in her veins, her chest panting and her heart burning with anger. The rain continued to pour down, soaking every minute thread of her clothing and cleansing her of all the blood she had spilled in the name of honour, tradition and sacrifice.
She wept.
Blank stared idly at the silver sea of The Aria, its sudden appearance no comfort to his tired limbs and his shattered mind. For a man who had just been killed, however, he remained remarkably composed. He almost seemed contented, as if he had somehow foreseen that last moment before the katana had so barbarically cut through his bones, shattered his ribs and slammed his corpse into the contested ground of Hallow.
In truth he had, but he did not understand how he had known.
He pictured the fire in his heart and knew that the Oni that was trapped in the tenets of his blood arcana was somehow responsible. Perhaps it had whispered half-truths into his mind as the Ronin had approached, knocked sense into him when the Oni in the mind of Ju had started to awaken. In any respect, this death would only be temporary.
Even immortal souls were afraid, or vain, he could not be sure which applied. He had grown quite accustomed to this life, this body, this talent; to lose it now to be reborn far away would aggrieve him.
He mouthed his sister’s name in silence, as the silver sea absorbed all cries. It exhuded harmony and peace on every pair of shoulders that walked on the sea salt wood jetty and gazed out at the heart of creativity itself.
Blank remembered each and every time he had appeared here, and each long conversation he had held with himself in the lonely hours that passed for the brief seconds he vanished from the real world. This time, however, he reflected on the brief seconds that had perhaps saved his life.
As Ju had spoken of his wife, Blank had used the distraction and their turned heads as they admired the hanging kimono on the far side of the hut to slip his dagger from its sheath. He had cut a nick along the inside of his thigh with its dual bladed edge.
“What of your wife?” He asked as the blood was drawn into the vial embedded in the hilt of Gerhard.
He smiled with contentment that he had done all he could, and folded his arms across his chest to wait. The gentle breeze flicked his auburn hair and bellowed his ragged trousers, temporarily free of the mud and blood that covered his corpse. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Gerhard rose into the night sky, clean and primed and ready for its moment of glory. Lillith stared at the body of her brother and bit her lip with apprehension. It had taken her half an hour to drag his body, and rescue his limb from the mud. It now rested in a heap on the steps of Ju’s home; it had taken ten minutes more to scrabble in the mud on her hands and desperate knees to find his weapons.
Tired, distraught and shaking she looked down at his serene grimace. His hair was matted and his severed limb pressed against his body so that it resembled a whole man like a grotesque jigsaw. With disgust and dismay, she shook her head slowly.
“I hope you are right Arden, I hope you are right…”
She dropped her knees and drove the dagger of the Janelle clan as hard into his heart as she could muster, breaking skin, cracking ribs and injecting the vial of Blank’s blood from the handle of the blade into the centre of his soul.
He had instructed her how to do this very act, as abominable as it was a year ago. She had resisted remembering it at first, the ancestral memories of the Kazumi Spirit Warders and their hatred of Blood Arcana resurging with amnesia to fight the insurrection.
All those centuries of war over ideological differences…
She was very grateful now that she had taken it on board. She was even more grateful that she had pestered Blank to imbue his daggers with his own essence, in case his perilous life ever got the better of him.
She fell back with a bump onto her backside and caught her breath. She shuffled her hands backwards to lean on and ignored the rough splinters that scratched at her, as if they were no longer welcomed by the village itself.
The dagger remained upright in his chest, and the vial emptied slowly, surrounded by a red aura that only Lillith could see.
Without thinking, Lillith played.
All at once, the customers of the tea room in downtown Dao-Lang became enthralled with her, dropping their conversations off cliffs and spires like deadweight. It was a sudden focus; fame bound irony, a perfect, conscious moment of encapsulating hearts.
No daughter of the Kazumi had plucked a shamisen’s string in Capitol City for three centuries. Even now, if the authorities and agents of the democratic government that had risen from the ashes of change caught wind of her true name, she would be dead within an hour at worst; locked in the dark depths of Corone at plausible best.
The danger was worth it and the risk was immense, which is why Lillith Kazumi played with a mask tied to her Scara Braen face. The crowd did not see a young girl, pallid in complexion and alien to these lands; they saw a porcelain fox, red stripes spiralling over its smile and the taint of kami legend keeping its pert ears aloft as she rocked back and forth to the movement of her music.
She had travelled through storms, wars and civil unrest to be seated where she was sat now, piled on cushions of imported furs from Salvar, which had been carried over permafrost as white as her mask to keep her comfortable. She had witnessed the spirits of Akashima’s continental heart rise up to warn her of the perils that awaited her in her homeland, and danced with them in a duet of words and riddles until the sun had risen and the Kitsune had bowed before her.
Most important of all, she had watched her brother die again, and brought him back to life with his own dagger, his own life spark, his own stubborn spirit which simply refused to die until they had fulfilled their purpose and reason for coming to these alien but familiar shores after so long.
“<Oh beauty bound in blossom so>,” the geisha sat next to her began her part in their performance with elegance and confirmed beauty. Her painted face and jade green kimono, which stood in stark contrast to the bed of leather and tan beneath her appropriately arranged legs, drew as much attention as Lillith’s music. “<From the heart, an eternity,” at the zenith of a flourish of intricate notes, the geisha began to move the fans she had rested on her lap in concentric patterns before her chest.
Through the gauze of the black muslin that covered her face, so as not to give away the shade of her skin or the colour of her eyes from behind her mask Lillith paid close attention to the patrons of the tea room. One in particular had caught her attention, seated in the middle of the large square room at a table next to the central pillar that held the circular roof aloft. He brandished a long, aged expression and a moustache that hanged below the chin in two draconic whiskers.
The Minister for Trade and Agriculture was the mirror image of the etching she and Blank had discovered in the civic library, with all the blustering character of a fattened politician desperately clinging to the vestiges of his rapidly diminishing youth. Drawing up the courage to move from the melodic section of Asoka, Lillith tensed her fingers and let the last echoes of her note drawl into silence. She counted the seconds down as the geisha stood and readied herself for the next part of her display.
The tinkle of the golden trinkets adorning her hair drifted over the tables and rattled in the delicate porcelain cups.
With masculine poise, the geisha bowed, and brought the fans together above her head in the shape of a rising sun. The delicate gold weaves flashed against the light of the evening sun, and bedazzled the audience into further compliance. They shared consciousness with nothing more than the need to move their cups to their mouths and sip the jasmine infusion served across the city during the hours of dusk and set the cups back onto the simple wooden trestle tables.
Lillith took a deep breath and returned her fingers to the shamisen’s neck. For this performance, she had allowed herself the luxury of playing on a real instrument, not one conjured from The Aria by her own shaky volition. It was perhaps as old as the tea room itself was and worth more than most of the buildings and establishments on the long winding and cluttered street outside. They had passed tall and densely packed buildings so ramshackle and clustered on top of one another she doubted that anything in these slums had seen better days.
“<Summer palls like rain in winter, said the snow>” the geisha continued, a sudden sharp intake of breath breaking the silence and empowering her charisma so that hands moved from customer pockets to the circling silver trays in the hands of the attentive waiters. The fan dance continued along with the donations, and Lillith’s instinct to perform, tempered by a long season of constant performance allowed her to slip seamlessly back into the musical arrangement of Akashima’s principle operatic theme without even a flutter or break of concentration on the true goal.
They had chosen the tea house over the palace for several reasons. The first, as Blank had been considered enough to highlight was the simplicity of their mission. They were unhindered by difficult escape here, as the circle dome of the tea room imposed no restriction on departure into the network of maze like streets and alleyways cluttered with decay beyond asides a network of red pillars inscribed with kanji of traditional tea rituals and verses.
They had chosen this tea house because their contacts in the city had tracked the Minister to the same part of the city each day for nearly a week. He would be here, and without a shadow of a doubt, he would be here exactly when the streets would be busiest and swollen with crowds attending the Sakura ritual in the city gardens.
Each year, when the blossoms grew to their brightest hue and began to fall in the spring winds and dawn of autumn, people from all across Akashima, and much further than the borders too came to see the spectacle. It was a befitting time to watch a man fall, a befitting time to see a rebirth begin its long process of growth into something woefully more worthwhile and healthy for the Capitol’s citizens.
Right between dusk and nightfall, lanterns would rise from every open window and vacant temple step. For hours afterwards, stars would shine that had a will and love of their own, each lantern possessing the wishes for the coming year and some small part of the family’s spirit that had set it to the winds.
Hopes of tomorrow set free on the breath of the kami...Lillith thought to herself, in between a melodic flourish a particularly difficult vibrato note that cracked ears.
Every neck in Akashima would be craned upwards, and every Akashiman would be unsuspecting of what the daughter of the southlands had come to do.
At the end of her song, the geisha bowed, and Lillith released her fingers from the instrument and set it eschew to one side. It rested in the bowl of her crossed legs and she instantly felt a relief as the strain of concentration and ritualistic breathing ended. She too bowed, though she realised that most of the attention, as was custom, was on the geisha.
“<Arigato>,” the geisha said, as she turned on a heel to leave the stage and disappear behind the counter into the only enclosed space of the tea room.
Chairs scraped backwards and customers, men, women and children and sages alike stood in applause. The sound of claps followed the geisha until she was long gone, and the patrons downed the last of their tea with a ritual cheer, slamming the cups onto the tables to cast away the last of the doubt in their minds.
Lillith smiled, and watched as every soul apart from hers vacated the dome and stepped out onto the circular platform that surrounded the tea room. On the cracked and worn steps, well-trodden for decades they all looked upwards, lovers cradling one another, families joyous and enemies departing from their enmities even if just for a few brief moments.
The Kitsune slipped from the stage silently, legs bowed and arms scythed outwards to lift her dead weight from the balls of her feet so that she remained non-existent to their distracted minds and senses. She tip toed to the table where the Minister had been sat and looked upwards with mirth well hidden behind the painted porcelain. Her simple black attire flashed malice from beneath the long white kimono she wore, which was devoid of anything other than deep red trim, so as not to upstage the geisha in her performance like a brash and jealous meiko.
She nodded to the shadow in the rafters, which moved with a flash of blue ribbons from one long length of ageing wood to another with the guile of a panther stalking the tree canopy. Lillith watched her brother flitter to the very limits of the dome, and flip with great agility over the rim of the building onto the roof. He emerged on the east side, knowing full well that the citizens of Akashima would be fixated to the west, and he clambered along the tiles and onto the adjacent building to the waiting embrace of freedom and success.
Lillith calmly looked over her shoulder at the edges of the crowd, and picked out the bright violet sash that declared the Minister’s allegiance and part in the government’s hierarchy to every down trodden slave to the mills and unwilling naginata bearer in the citizen levy that dared to forget. She keened her gaze like a well-aimed dagger into the side of his fat neck, and twitched, as if she had placed her tanto to his flesh and needed the jolt to do the deed.
Lillith, however, was too late.
As she had played her song, the patrons of the tea room had been too oblivious and enthralled by the perfection of the geisha’s divine movements and the fibrous, almost physical atmosphere created by the shamisen’s erratic and haunting and uplifting melody. It’s tart strings had succeeded where more subtle attempts had failed, and as Blank had watched with great pride from above as his sister did her dues, he had unfurled a long, almost invisible length of hair from the shadows.
The act of dripping poison along the skeins liver, as it was called by Scourge operatives of Scara Brae was an old Akashiman method to assassinate without detection. It required little effort, except patience beyond virtue, and could deliver the end to a man that drank; which included everyone living and even some of the dead who were no longer welcomed by well-paying employers. With his legs wrapped around the rafters, Blank had waited almost five minutes before the first drop of poison he had set to the string had landed without making a ripple into the Minister’s tea cup.
He glanced over his shoulder and looked down from his wind swept perch into the crowd. His eyes darted a dagger the man’s neck too, and as Lillith Kazumi and Arden Janelle, who had defied a rivalry centuries old to start the long road to freedom in the Akashima they now despised, the Minister for Trade and Agriculture opened his mouth with a splutter as the poison reached his heart.
Someone in the crowd screamed in shock and pointed, and the eyes of the patrons fell from the rising swarm of lanterns to witness the first of many political upheavals that would befall the government if it did not pay attention to the bigger threat. Rebellion after all did not come from within; from the willing anarchy daggers of change, but from the people’s need to be heard.
Lillith slipped out of the tea room with a swagger in her step, her mask pulled up and her cheeky smile beaming. She heard the thud of a body falling softly to the floor and imagined with a satisfying glee the image of a bald head cracking against a hard, justified end.
“They certainly heard that,” she said with a sarcastic drawl, before she kicked into a run and vanished into the infinite expanse of her new battleground.
Lillith could not be sure, but she could have sworn Blank moved.
She leant forwards, to peer closer like a curious child prodding a dead dog with a sharp stick. Yes! She exclaimed, as she noticed the sinew and veins between limb and torso wriggling and writhing like woms in a fetid corpse. A rising well of excitement lifted her from her backside and onto the balls of her feet. She leant forwards further still to watch in wonderment as the Blood Arcana finally began working its miracle.
“<Praise the Indigo Kami,>” she shouted with the first happiness to run rampant through Hallow naked in the twilight.
The mud seemed to fall away from his body in great scabs, as if an inner flame were drawing all the moisture from it. In short order, the fiery aura emanating from the hilt of the dagger spread across the entire length of his body and Lillith shuffled back in amazement, mouth agog and heart racing.
Blank wavered, suddenly short of breath.
His eyes keened onto the horizon, the tightness in his torso rising up from his lungs, into his throat and up to constrict his throat like a python crushing the life from its unwilling victim.
“Ugh…” he mumbled fustily.
It took only a few minutes for the limb to re-attach itself properly, which left only a thin scar around his shoulder; a flesh wound in Blank’s eyes no doubt. Spirals of fire rolled around his limbs, knocking the mud and destitution aside as if the Oni wanted him to rise resplendent.
“Lillith…” he mumbled, the silver sea shrinking as he rose swiftly up into the glowing skies, thick with mist and electrifying bolts of transient energy.
The soft chorus of the rain plied tension to Lillith's racing nerves as she waited by Blank's side, baited breath desperately trying not to scream with excitement and thanks to the gods for returning him back to her. Her emotions were spiralling in tandem with the providence of the Oni onlookers that resided in his blood and his dagger, a purity tempering the corruption the Janelle clan had fallen upon so many centuries ago.
Even as he returned from whatever hell he had fallen into, Lillith started perhaps to understand. Blood Arcana was in all civil societies and interpretations tolerantly immoral - drawing power from the life force of either yourself or others was an abomination, a sacrifice of the spirit gifted to every child by the residents of the spirit world, but...
"Maybe there is good in everything, and it is the people who wield it that make it so..."
She crossed her fingers and stood back, Blank's body emanating heat and fear as if he were screaming on the inside, suffering to be brought back.
Blank left the safety of The Aria, his mind racing as he felt like he was going to die for real. Though there was the faint reminder at the back of his mind that no such finality would come, it did not make the transition from the heart of the Thayne Tantalus to the limbo between worlds any easier.
He was protected on the jetty, divided from hell by the mercury and endless waves of the sea.
"Here..." he mumbled, his breath returning and his limbs flailing in the infinite red expanse of the spirit world..."I pay my price for Saiketsu...<for drawing the Oni's blood...>."
He stared at the massive dragon that floated before him, its glowing scales and wispy talons a thousand times larger than any man that walked the surface of Althanas. Its long whiskers and razor fangs gleamed in the ominous twilight, and it was there and then that Blank deciphered the meaning of his dream, and all the treachery that rested in Ju's heart and the rage of the Ronin war band.
Blank opened his eyes with a gasp, his body writhing in agony as if the aura that surrounded him were made of actual flame, burning his spirit instead of his flesh. Lillith stooped to his side and clutched him tight as he pushed himself upright, chest panting, breath heavy, eyes wide as if a thousand knives were being driven into his mind.
The Komodo smiled with wry satisfied in its eternal tomb, and praised itself for its torturous assault on the oldest of its enemy's minds.
"Soon," it whispered, "I will torment you for real..."
“Lillith…” he spluttered, lips parched and face still pallid and weary from exhaustion.
“Shhh,” she whispered, stroking his hair and pulling the fetid strands from his forehead. “Do not speak. You should rest now, there is no time to talk…”
There was however always time for song.
Without thinking she started to whisper a lullaby. She did not understand the meaning of the words, bound as they were in an ancient dialect of Akashiman that her mother had sung to her on the shores of Tokyun’s mighty rivers; her ancestral home of this life, and many of the lives she had lead throughout her time.
“<Aogeba toutoshi wagashi no on
Oshie no niwa ni mo hayaiku tose
Omoeba itotoshi kono toshi tsuki
Imakoso wakareme, iza saraba.
Tagai ni mutsu mishi higoro no on
Wakaruru nochinimo yayo, wasuruna
Mi wo tatte, na wo age, yayo, hageme yo
Imakoso wakareme, iza, saraba.
Asayuu nareshini, manabinomado
Horaru no tomoshibi, tsumu shirayuki
Wasururuma sonaki, yuku toshitsuki
Imakoso wakareme, iza saraba.>”
Blank's fever slowly died with every utterance of her song of gratitude. Idly, they rocked back and forth, the sound of the rain softly pattering down onto the roof of the chieftain's hut. It soothed their tired and aching bodies into a sense of safety, security and solitary togetherness.
Every now and then Lillith looked up to glance at the corpse that was heaped against the tea table only to look away again with regret. Blank stared down at the mud in the central square, his wild eyes and racing thoughts picking out the mountain of black iron and clawed hands that jutted up from the suffocating thickness of the salt sluice. Flashing images of his swordplay burnt his tormented eyes.
"Lillith..." he said slowly, after several minutes passed by with even slower motions and whispers. "I...think I saw something, when I was...dead."
"Blank...rest, we can tal-" she shut her mouth as he pointed and interrupted.
"They are not here willingly, the Ronin...they are possessed by Oni, but it is the nature of the Oni that is troubling me..."
She thought for a few confusing seconds, and remembered the stories of old that they had shared in the comfort of the Prima Vista and on their ship journey to the shores of Corone and the port of Jadet.
"The Komodo?" She raised an eyebrow, uncertain if she had remembered the name correctly.
"He is not a warlord, Lillith. He is a Greater Oni, one of the Greater Oni."
She felt sick at the thought of another of those foul creatures interfering with her home, and the purple aura that tainted her own flickered as the poison in her soul grew stronger. Belief was a powerful force in Akashima, if you thought ill of something, it grew mightier, and if you believed in something it came into existence.
"The Komodo," she said with a futile realisation that the truth had been dangled right in front of them the moment they had arrived in Hallow. "Ju was trying to warn us, he fought the Oni every step of the way..."
Blank nodded and pushed away from Lillith, finally drawing enough strength to sit upright on his own volition. He swung the ball of his arm socket around to return feeling and blood flow to his once severed limb, which felt cold and strange and numb to the touch.
"Genii is dead..." he said flatly. "I felt the Oni in his spirit just as I somehow did subconsciously with the others."
"It will not be long before more come..." Lilith said, resigning herself to a long hard march through the many last barriers of pain and desolation she thought she could stomach before simply laying down her burdens and dying where she came to rest.
"It will not be long before war comes with them..." the silent swordsman said, standing upright on shaky limbs and stepping out into the rain to wash the last stains of mud from his body.
Lillith watched with weariness, scrutinising his every move as he stepped shaking onto the mud and walked towards the fallen bodies. In her heart, she felt something had changed in him. She vowed to ask him one day what he had been through to be drawn back to life so violently, but today was not that day, and she followed him to help him recover his weapons in silence.
They made north with great haste, provisions from Ju’s hut in sack slings over their shoulders and nothing but the rain and each other for company on the long road through the open and rolling plains of the south. They had said little since they had pulled Blank’s swords from the mud, and said fewer words still once their feet had touched the open road and started to carry their tired, weary bodies without cognitive thought.
For Lillith, the hardest part of their ordeal had been succumbing to the temptations of Blood Magic. Though Blank now lived, and was not dead to her once more, the weight of utilising the aeon old strength and way of the Oni was anathema to her and more so to her past lives, which she felt she had betrayed through driving the dagger into his chest. She kept her head hung low, and counted the pebbles in the road to drag her mind from its own tyranny, the ever growing presence of the Jurugumo’s poison boiling and painfully cursing through her heart as a reminder of the powers they meddled with.
Ju's hospitality still made her feel like a murderer...did he have to die?
For Blank, discerning the nature of the vision he had seen was the most difficult. It had been far too long since he had committed an act of assassination, having the fortune now to be able to command any of the lower echelons of The Scourge to do his deeds for him. If Ju was trying to help them, before the Oni realised and tore through its cage, then the Minister for Trade was an asset. If he was trying to tell them something regarding the nature of the Komodo’s insurrection into Akashiman society, then the Minister, as he had foreseen, would have to suffer the first death in a long line of successions to change the fortune of the people.
The more pressing concern for the swordsman, was where he was going to find someone able to reforge the Rheilhand with the same skill Genii had?
With weary hearts, the two children of Akashima’s long wars and sceptical traditions continued on their way, the act of Saiketsu, of drawing blood still fresh in their memories, the lives of the innocent people lost to the Oni still proud on their sleeves, the dreary times and the coming dangers they would all face flaring on the horizon like a vibrant, ignoble reminder that war was not noble, and war would not be kind to them, no matter how honourable or righteous the cause.
“Blank,” Lillith said finally, as they crested a small hill and looked down onto a small fishing village, not dissimilar to Hallow, but larger and with a genuine feeling of happiness and contentment surrounding it.
“Don’t you dare suggest another detour,” she said with a grin, finally digging her way out of her misery.
They laughed, and pressed on.
“After what I have seen today sister, our destination is in Dao-Ling’s Tea House, and the good taste of cinnamon and jasmine sake!”
Spoils:
10% gold reduced for the Tantalum Menagerie ability.
Spirit Sight: Blank and Lillith are both awakening to their ability to see the spirits of the Oni and the auras they project when they hide in a living body. Blank can feel them when they are near, and sees them as a red flame surrounding hearts. Lillith can feel emotion and see a purple haze as well as spiritual cobwebs in a person's home when they are touched by spirits.
The International
08-03-11, 08:10 PM
Review of Saiketsu
This is going to be strait forward and to the point. First of I commend you on applying some of the notes I’ve been giving you over the last few reviews.
Plot Construction 20 /30
Story 7/10 - You have a well structured story here, and it all flowed nicely up until the last page. The point where you began to focus on the Capitol City almost felt like another story, or a story within a story, or something. Also the disasters/obstacles you put in front of Blank and Lillith can be a little more balanced. One at the end of each quarter of the story – it should start small, but significant enough to keep the characters in the game, and then escalate. The stakes should get higher little by little. That first disaster – Lillith and Blank’s battle with the Ronin/<Komono> could have been brought down to two or three posts, and would have put the rest of the story in good proportion.
Strategy 6 /10 – I particularly like what you did with Blank’s blood magic here. The Ronin were very well thought out, if not conventional, but I also love that you did well to show that everyone in this thread was a professional with their particular type of Japanese sword. It was also very good to see such a direct use of the Aria after mentioning it so many times in other threads. At times you decided to tell instead of show, particularly that battle in the first and second pages. Things were moving fast, but they were moving fast over a large amount of content. Try taking the awesome sensory and description you had in the beginning and sprinkle it into the battle.
Setting 7/10 – Sensory was amazing. Smells, sight, touch, it was all there, AND you made sure to only include what was important to your central characters. If it wasn’t important to your characters at the moment, you were setting up for a future event. A good example is how pristine the road was for Hallow village, and then it was later mentioned that there was a dark connection to it. That town was very genuine. Loved it. Don’t forget to do that every time you change location.
Characterisation 22.5 /30
Continuity 8 /10 – That little poem near the end of the thread was fricking awesome. Most of what you did in this thread to make Akashima genuine by connecting it to real Asian culture (particularly Japanesse) – great moves… except for one. You said the word ‘Orient’ or something like that once in the thread. Language – awesome, styling and tradition – cool, using a term that connects to a region or era on Earth – that’s a little much. Otherwise, I can’t wait till you get your hands on the Akashima Wiki.
Interaction 7 /10 – Interaction judges the way the main character interacts with the world around them, be it socially, physically, or otherwise. You were good physically. Blank and Lillith touched, picked up, sat, ran, walked on, looked at, knocked over a lot of shit. Socially I needed more form the village of Hallow. I kept asking myself ‘what are the people of the village doing right now?’. It was addressed as an afterthought, but I’ll use my spy PC as an example. If he gets into a fight in the street, he ends it quick and gets the hell out of there before a crowd gathers and people can ID him. The common mob needs to be as significant a character as your characters especially if they’re engaging in battle.
Character 7.5 /10 – You made a great call separating them during the battle because it made you and the reader see things from the point of view (3rd Person Limited) of one character or the other. That allowed those of us who were reading to gain a better emotional experience. This wasn’t the case, however, when you dealt with Blank and Lillith together in a post. I wasn’t sure whose eyes I was seeing the world through, if I was at all. The solution to this is doing the same thing you did in the battle posts – picking either Blank or Lillith to see the world through. That’s the simple and less risky option. The second but more risky option would be to head hop your POV when you see fit. The problem is it makes readers feel like they have multiple personality disorder if done wrong.
Writing Style 20.5 /30
Creativity 7 /10 – You have a firm understanding of literary devices. Now it would be good to focus on how you distribute them. At times you piled the similes and such on a little heavy, at other times it wasn’t there at all. I find it best to use them when what’s going on in the narrative is simple and straight forward, but then when the narrative demands extra brainpower from the reader it’s time to ease up on the complex comparisons and such.
Mechanics 7 /10 – There were times when you used fragmented statements for styling purposes which I liked, but instead of using a period, try a dash, semicolon or the dreaded dot… dot… dot… to separate the fragmented sentence from the previous statement its intended to enhance. There were other times when a colon should have been used.
Clarity 6.5 /10 – Because of the aforementioned artistic choice in syntax I had to read a few paragraphs over once or twice, but for the most part it was very straight forward and easy to understand.
Wildcard: 7/10
Total 70 /100
Blank gains 2270 exp. and looses 219 gp for the Tantalum Menagerie ability.
Spirit Sight granted since it doesn't apply to any PCs
Silence Sei
08-04-11, 10:13 PM
Gp-Exp added.
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