MQ: Deadly Shadows

[The International]

Deadly Shadows

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Reserved for Lillith Kazumi
Warning: Adult Content

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Ludivine was an amazing storyteller.

She was able to take one person and tell them a wonderful story about themselves without even speaking. Of course the best stories came in five parts. Take the Duke of The South, Minamoto Satoshi, for example. The Akashiman noble had graced this life for forty three years, and he never knew that the most erogenous part of his body was his clavicle area, along which the seductress licked, kissed, and nibbled at like a Haidian Vampire. This was the Exposition, and with every twitch, moan, and sigh of released tension, the main character learned more about himself, and his female lead.

No good story was without its conflict, and the conflict here was simple. The teasing the rubbing the grinding; it was all getting him more anxious to simply get down to business, but this woman wasn’t going to let him in that easily. She deserved the same pleasure she was giving him. His kisses became more sensual, his caress was tighter but softer. She had used the knowledge gathered about him from the Exposition to smoothly escalate through the Rising Action. Now they were finally in a position to meet the primary goal.

Then came the third act in which the protagonist and the antagonist engaged one another directly in the plush bed that enveloped the two of them as much as they enveloped one another, on the floor rug whose patterns and shapes were as varied as theirs, and on the ataman near the draped window that only let in a few sharp blades of morning sunlight to illuminate the rhinestones of sweat on Ludivine’s porcelain flesh. This would be where the protagonist would show his mettle. Ludivine now knew Satoshi inside and out, and every time his already toned body tensed she would step away to remind him of what a treat he was having, stand up on the magnificent endless pillars that were her muscular legs, or, with no further explanation needed, simply squeeze. He could have forced himself upon the antagonist, but given who she was looking for that would not have been wise.

Finally Satoshi showed himself. “You can contact your kin by making the mark of the crescent moon on the southern wall near the dojo.” He said as he looked up at her sitting on his chest. And so the Climax of the story was over without the protagonist getting his climax. However, it wasn’t over yet. The amateur storyteller would end here, but Ludivine was a professional.

On to the Falling Action, which resembled a wrestling match. He had more information to give, and now that he had shown his true colors there was no use in holding the rest back. “Make the mark at noon, when the sun is at its highest.” The vibration of his deep voice resonated through her as his head was buried in her bare chest. She clenched his sable hair to keep him there as she grinded her hips to and fro. He continued. “Return at sundown. They will make contact.”

She pulled at the Duke’s hair, forcing him to look up at her glacial blue eyes as she slowly lowered her mouth to his. She spoke in perfect Akashiman before their lips met. “Is there anything else?” A passionate meeting of the mouths and massaging of the tongues followed. She pulled away and returned to his clavicle with a lick and a bite.

“They are without masters, much like the Ronin, but they are more inclined to keeping to the shadows.” Satoshi paused for a moan of relief to escape his mouth. “The Ronin keep to their own agenda of chaos and strife. The Ninja, or at least the particular clan you seek audience with, hold the agenda of their current employer. They inform the gentry on a need to know basis, usually deriving from tactical necessity. A village is evacuated for a fortnight, and its occupants return ner a stone lifted or an object misplaced. True professionals… like you.”

Thump. A proper response to the double entendre: a thrust in the same spirit. It was time to resolve this conflict, create a normality for the Duke by way of erotic catharsis - a release of tension and anxiety. With her legs wrapped around his body like a set of glistening vines she controlled the speed of the mutual motion until he finally got what he wanted, and collapsed in a cry of relief on the advent of the Resolution.

She stood up and made her way to the lavatory. This part was her least favorite, the very last portion of the story where the protagonist would determine whether this would be a comedy or a tragedy whether it would end with a happy dénouement or a sad catastrophe.

“You must come see me again after your task is complete.” Minamoto Satoshi said with an undertone of desperation to experience her again. He had decided, like several men did at the feet of a superb lover, to omit the air of confidence they had upon introduction. This was a bad choice.

“If you ever see me again.” She said with an apathetic and completely unapologetic tone as she emerged from the lavatory with her midnight blue clothes on. “You won’t know it’s me, and you should hope never to have to see me again, Duke.”

The Duke rose from his bed with frustration. Like many men, he would refuse to take no for an answer, but he didn’t realize who he was dealing with. Just as he strutted across the room a knock on the oaken double doors stopped him in his tracks. “My Lord.”

The world froze as the tragic hero decided what to do. He was not aware that every option would end in his defeat one way or another? He could have imposed himself upon Ludivine, in which case she would have killed him. The servant outside the doors tried again. “… My Lord.”

Satoshi could have made a noisy spectacle in which his wife would have found out. His last, and probably safest course of action, would be to address his servant and return to his daily business. Either way, victory, which was having her again, was impossible. The servant outside the doors tried again. “… My Lord?”

“What!”

“I apologize deeply, my Lord. There is a Lillith Kazumi here seeking your audience.” The servant paused for a moment. “Shall I send her away?”

The Duke’s shoulders slumped as he realized his defeat. “… No. I will be out in a few minutes.” She wouldn’t be there when the Duke got back. He knew it as well as she did. And so the tragedy ended in a subtle catastrophe that was the protagonist’s realization that he would never experience such a woman as the antagonist ever again.

Ludivine was an amazing storyteller indeed. She moved a dark drape on the window to the side to relish one more time in the breathtaking view of the town. The cloudy beige granite wall marked the southernmost reach of the Akashiman kingdom. That was where she would go next… after a good bath of course.

[Lillith]

The residence of Duke Satoshi was an elaborate and well adorned spire of decadence and corruption. It mirrored, or so the denizens of its long golden halls presumed, the polyglot tendencies and the greed that rested in the heart of its master. Though it had presided over the lives of many Dukes in Akashima’s relatively short history compared to the Elder Kingdoms of Althanas, Satoshi, the Duke of the South as he was better known, had truly turned the dragon etched columns and kanji lined galleries into an edifice of his need for self-satisfaction.

Like his many predecessors, Satoshi had added his own particular vision to the palace. He had removed many of the armouries and store rooms that ran along the bottom corridors in favour of libraries and reading rooms, containing erotic knowledge and illustrious tomes of sagely wisdom from the far flung reaches of Corone and beyond. In the previous winter, the maids still chatted about how the Duke had gutted the centre of the residence to make way for a circular courtyard, so that he could see the joy of the sun without exposing himself to the daggers of his enemies.

Eighty feet wide with an ancient and gnarled sakura tree standing at its centre, the courtyard was an impressive ante chamber to the room that rested at the top of the wide stairway that sat on the north curvature of the sun retreat. It was in such a courtyard that Lillith Kazumi waited. Though there were many benches scattered amongst the flower beds and herb gardens, Lillith had chosen to remain standing by the tree, basking in its glory whilst avoiding the glare of the sun as it appeared over the cylindrical like walls.

To a woman who had been patiently biding her time for three centuries for the opportunity to right her wrongs, the few minutes it took for the Duke’s lap dog of a servant to disappear and return with a smile were seconds, drops in the ocean, a pleasant reprieve from the grind of the long stretch between sunrise and the present.

With her sights firmly set on the impressive horizon of the rocky barren wastes of Southern Akashima, she waited for him to report to her that the Duke was busy, occupied on business, or perhaps simply not in residence at this precise moment.

When he held out a shaking sheet of parchment, rolled into a neat scroll and tied closed with a white length of ribbon, she smiled with a wry satisfaction. Her name, it seemed, had carried enough weight to warrant a personally penned rejection. She bowed politely, barely tucking her knees under the duress of the tight wrappings and the impractical attire that was required of her assignment, and took it with a half-painted hand.

She did not appreciate having to wait for the customary flurry of bows and nods that the servant seemed inclined to instigate each time he set eyes on her. Then again, she did not realise that at the precise moment she had arrived at the doorsteps of the Duke’s residence, another woman, ravishing and sensuous and just as deadly as she was had decided to depart. The servant eyed her nervously, as if tallying the Duke’s many eschewed preferences against the golden vine jewellery and silk kimono adorned with kami the woman before him was wearing with elegance, gait and a slightly unnatural edge.

Lillith, for the first time in her life, had walked onstage in an entirely appropriate costume. What she did not expect, however, was to have gained an audience with the one man in the South that could give her what she and her brother wanted the most on the merits of her physical assets, and not her title, stature, or the wildfire news of her recent exploits in Capital City.

“<Thank you,>” she said with a pleasant and humble grace as she took the scroll and tentatively opened it. She set the ribbon over her wrist, and leant out into the sun’s rays to cast light on the elegant script. It was written once in kanji, which Lillith skipped in favour of the practically monosyllabic trade speak underneath.

“One moment,” she read aloud, before hurriedly binding the scroll closed and returning it to the care of the servant. The man or, rather, the beast flicked its ears and stepped to one side, waving its paw to the stairs as he did so.

“Lord Satoshi will see you shortly, once his…” he licked his lips with indecision, “guest has departed. It would be unwise for him to simply cut the visitation short”.

Remarkably well spoken for a nekojin, she thought, without malice or racism. She was genuinely pleased to see the Duke refrain from the xenophobic tendencies of the inner city politicians. She still felt distinctly sick standing in such luxury, whilst the people of the south, like the villagers of Hallow and the other fishing outposts suffered in poverty. The cheers from the crowds outside the tea house as the Minister for Trade and Agriculture had dropped dead had only served to bolster her hatred of what her homeland had become.

“<It is an honour,>” she bowed again, which instigated another game of etiquette tennis between servants. In the awkward silence that followed, she looked with scrupulous and ever patient eyes up the far stairwell, her beauty mirrored by that of the cherry blossom as it cascaded down in an unseen breeze, it’s scent heavy in the absence of any wind, the tension in the air and in her chest compounded by the fact that one false move could mean the end to the day's plans.

At least for the good Duke…she corrected herself.

[The International]

Ludivine adjusted her halter top and the four tier ruffled skirt from safe behind the flair of light she had created by cracking open the drapes. Her attire was such a midnight blue that it was black in these conditions, and nothing but the icy blue hooks of the soul that were her eyes could be seen by the Duke as he wrapped himself in a silk robe in frustration. She held herself steadfast in the shadow as she twirled her long black locks and watched him dress. It was in her nature to seek dark and high places. She had learned it from the very clan she was seeking.

“Do not hesitate to let yourself out, Miss Wakahisa.” The Duke said with an unfiltered tone of frustration. The wooden sandals on his feet clicked like a pair of heels as he walked across the oversized bedroom to the lavatory. “… whore.”

Ludivine paid no mind as she glanced at the velvet pouch of gold pieces jingling off of her left hip. This was supposed to be the Duke’s money, but now it was hers to do with as she pleased. The Empire had sent her to hire a team of Ninja to work on their behalf, and they knew that they would need to win the graces of the Duke of The South to even contact them, but Ludivine decided to pay him in a different way. Her experience taught her that money only got one so far. She finally stepped out of that shadow, and made her way out.

The hefty set of double doors opened to a vast corridor of golden trim, engraved graces, and mirrored walls. Every footstep on the oaken planked floor made a creaking noise that bounced off of the reflective walls as clearly as an image did. This was done on purpose to prevent people like Ludivine from entering at the dead of night and slitting the Duke’s throat. The man was clearly paranoid, but rightfully so. Little did he know that she, and any good assassin like her, didn’t need to use the floors to get in. A servant hastily passed by her and ran down the stairs to address the Duke’s guest.

Ludivine only granted the guest a passing glance. The name Lillith Kazumi was linked to a number of important happenings in Akashima lately, from beast hunting to riot inciting. If the assassin had time she would have paid the name some mind… No she wouldn’t. Notoriety meant nothing to her especially since doing her job right meant gaining no notoriety whatsoever.

[Lillith]

The feet of the Duke appeared first, as gravity and common sense dictated. Almost immediately, the nekojin servant straightened his spine and stood to attention, before falling forwards into a bend not dissimilar to a shelf support. Lillith, above him in social ranking but not immune to the trappings of tradition, bowed ever so slightly, with a hand held out flimsily for the Duke to touch when he approached.

Even before the Duke had stepped onto the courtyard proper, she could smell the whores. She, after all, had been particularly well versed in the arts of the feminine entertainment in many of her past lives; it was her providence to know, to outline, to even select which flowers made up the scent. All Lillith thought about, was how corrupt the government had become. This man though dressed swiftly and according to the mystery of his guest, did not hold Akashima in high regard, and for a Duke, that was reprehensible.

“Mrs Kazumi,” he said in broken common, inflected with Akashiman accent and undercut with surprise.

Lillith sighed, she had hoped her make-up would have disguised the fact she was, in her current incarnation, clearly not a true daughter of her home. He took her hand and kissed it gently, before folding his arms over his front and giving his guest a stern inspection.

She’s certainly more beautiful than Lan…the other one, her name had already left his memory, scattered to the winds of constant indulgence in the eager women of his rugged landscape. He provided resources; they provided reason for him to be lenient to the citizens of his domain. Lillith had no doubt that he intended for her to be the next notch in his bedpost, and the South’s next momentary cessation of hostilities. She felt sick in her mouth slightly, like she did after Ruby’s cooking.

“Duke Satoshi-san,” she said back in the same tongue, though with significantly less pretence. She did not see the point in denying herself to him.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Mrs Kazumi?” He glanced at the nekojin, who shuddered beneath his glare and stepped out of the immediate circle to stand dutifully on the outskirts of the courtyard, directly in the scouring heat of the sun which shone down onto the jade speckled stone and the statuesque and verdant blooms which brought colour to the heart of the Duke’s home.

“You are astute to see through the façade, Duke Satoshi, so I shall not deceive you with words.” She turned her hand over and displayed the gold band that she had painted white on the back of her hand, but could not quite bare to hide in her inner palm. “I am a geisha, and it is in the duty bound honour of the Geisha House of Dao-Ling that I have come here, so do away with all notion of bedding me, or I will cut you with your own legendary wit and be done with the defence of the south.”

The Duke clenched his teeth, as if he were steeling himself against a blow he was not sure would come. There was an awkward silence, broken only by heavy heart beats and the gentle tinkling of the golden hair ornaments arranged in clumps in Lillith’s elegantly woven hair.

She remained utterly composed with a stoic expression on the outside, but butterflies swarmed and fluttered in her stomach beneath the tight wrappings of her garb.

“Hahahah!” The Duke guffawed, with a horse-like stammer and a raucous declaration that he was not as brutal as the commoners of the Capitol slums had lead Lillith to believe when she had committed herself to the task at hand. Lillith slumped with relief, and the Duke gestured for them to sit on the adjacent bench.

With shuffled footwork, she bent at the knee and brought herself side-saddle onto the stone, seated facing the Duke who sat on the left end. The nekojin moved with them, to stand on the opposite side of the path, eyes averting every chance and possibility of drawing the wrath of his master.

“You are a most interesting woman; tell me, what does that old rogue Dao-Ling want that he cannot see me himself about?”

Dao-Ling, as Lillith and Blank had discovered, was one of the many entrepreneurial businessmen of Capitol City who had seen a market in gaining political influence through presenting their finest Geisha and Meiko to the Dukes of Akashima. Of course, Lillith’s disgust as she had heard this from the man’s very lips had been hard for her to contain, so much so that after receiving a generous donation of the kimono and jewellery she wore at that very moment, she had driven her tanto into his eyeball, and followed her gesture with a similar deposit of her well-worn heel in his groin.

“Dao-Ling would like you to share with him information pertaining to the Shinobi, the ninja clans.” She said it bluntly, and without dressing up her words. She bowed, and produced from her kimono a small ivory comb, a delicate and expensive relic of the samurai-era she had procured in the junket market. Dao-Ling’s last words had been giving him a gift that he can capture a woman’s heart with will buy him as securely as an honest exchange between merchant and customer.

Instantly, he held out his hand and took it with a shaking tremble to his fingers.

“He still remembers our agreement, after so many months without delivery of his excellent, no, luxurious items.” His voice turned somewhat perverted and Lillith clenched her teeth to bite back the need to do to the Duke what she had done to the geisha driver. “Very well,” he said a moment later, after turning the comb over in his hands several times to catch it at all angles in the glorious sunlight. It cast little circles of magnesium glow across the bench and the lapel of his elegant attire, encapsulating him like a piece of silver would a magpie.

“To discuss whatever matters you have with the ninja, you simply have to draw a <tsuki> on the South wall in chalk. By dusk, you shall have your audience, though I warn you Mrs Kazumi, if you are not from these lands, they will end your life without a flicker of thought for the dutiful attendance of the ancient ways. The kami will dance on your discarded and most delicate corpse, I would hate to see that happen to,” he looked at her, directly into her eyes and she was almost sure he looked down with quicksilver speed for an unsubtle inspection of her breasts, “someone as beautiful as you.”

She made to speak, but the Duke slapped his knees and beamed her smile, before standing suddenly and making to walk away. “Tell Dao-Ling I shall expect a real geisha next time, none of this imported rubbish.” At which point, he cast his mind back to the climatic finish to his previous engagement, and the scent of Ludivine’s allure returned to his nostrils. If he hadn’t known any better, or if he hadn’t been so monstrous to women for so long, he could have fallen to his knees and proposed to the woman there and then…in the soft light of the morning drenched in dedication, life fluid and chauvinism.

Lillith cut an invisible tanto over his neck from behind, but stood and bowed as was customary. Role reversal was at the heart of all social exchanges in Akashima, and now she was subservient to the traditions she adored, and he was the puppet master pulling the strings.

“I shall do just that, Satoshi-san,” her accent slipped deeper into Akashiman as she grew more comfortable with herself, and she smiled politely as he disappeared with gait up the long staircase to his no doubt whore laden bed chambers.

“A moon,” she whispered, as she drew a piece of chalk from her pocket and turned it in the sunlight. “By sunset,” she looked at the nekojin and smiled, “what is your name, friend?”

The servant looked so shocked it practically spewed a fur ball, until it spluttered “Napa” with an almost excited relish and scuttled towards the great doors that he had lead Lillith through to meet with the Duke. She followed him without the elegance she had practiced for hours in their small hotel room, much to the bemusement of Blank, and strode with heavy footfalls through the spiralling golden dragons which ate their own tails on the doors and around the archway. The long, cold and mosaicked corridor beyond was uninviting, but a welcome sight that lead to the outdoors, and her waiting rickshaw.

“Tell me, Napa, how would you like to be free?”

She did not have long to relay to the nekojin her plans, and how she had slipped a small kami bound creature beneath the stone bench as the Duke had squinted during his laugh. If the ninja betrayed her, and he ever looked at her like that again, all the nekojin had to do was say ‘Tantalum’, and the Duke would never forget her name, written as it would be into his forehead, for all the women of Akashima to see that he was claimed.

They stepped out into the sun and she steeled herself for the journey further South still, to the jagged and impressive sights of the ancient Southern Wall, the imposing barrier between Akashima and its forlorn and war stricken cousin, the torn kingdom of Corone. She had survived, and that was a good sign for the downtrodden people. The hard part was still to come, though, finding out where the ninja were was one thing, getting them to talk with words and not jiujutsu was going to be another altogether.

[The International]

After an hour’s relaxation at the local hot spring it was time for Ludivine to get back to business and make her way to the contact point. The pale red granite wall of the Southern boarder seemed to cast a shadow over the civilization it guarded even at the time of day where there were no shadows. Her heart rattled at the sight of the hardy Akashiman people doing their daily dance along the checkerboard layout of the town in their jimbeis and kimonos, each contributing to the chorus of everyday tradition in the peculiar song-like inflections. Her taste buds fluttered at the smell of one of her all time favorites, poached salmon, and her pupils surely dilated at the sight of the wooden colonnades, curved rooftops, and signs adorned in the artistic calligraphy that was written Akashiman. She had been to Akashima plenty of times in her life, but today she had been stricken with a particularly acute case of nostalgia, and she knew exactly why.

The spy reached into a black velvet bag that wrapped around her left wrist to expose a small stick of porcelain chalk as she stepped into the narrow alley between a smithy and a stonemason’s guild. Just beyond them lay the towering Southern wall, which close up revealed is porous texture and its black freckles. It reminded Ludivine of herself as an acme cursed teenager not too long ago. The contact point wasn’t too far from here. All she had to do was turn right and… wonder in concealed astonishment at the very woman on the other side of the smithy looking dead at her. Ludivine tilted her head and raised an eyebrow as a piece of her mind smacked her in the face with a memory of that very same color kimono back at the Duke’s mansion. While she never bothered to observe facial details of the famed Lillith Kazumi, this could not have been a coincidence.

She crossed her arms and shifted her weight. The woman forty feet away did the same, which was distinctly not an Akashiman thing to do. She scaled her eyes up the wall, as did the other. She looked at a point on that wall equidistant between the two of them. The other did the same. Ludivine silently cursed the Duke, who surely sent this woman on the same path as her. Suddenly the other woman began to walk. Almost as if to defend herself Ludivine began to walk as well – and so began a game of walking chicken. As they closed in on one another Ludivine suppressed her frustration and began to assess her target in cold, calculating precision.

This woman, whom she assumed to be Lillith Kazumi had a good three to four inches on Ludivine. The slight tan of the skin beneath her quality makeup was difficult to hide. The expressive jade hooks of the soul that were her eyes put Ludivine on edge. The snow in her sable hair was not that which was set upon by years, but it still created an interesting contrast to her otherwise youthful ambience. The spy’s blood boiled as she subtly played with the sunsetu rings on her spidery fingers. Attacks and counterattacks rushed through her mind’s eye as they drew closer and closer until finally… they passed each other by right at the contact point, where someone was supposed to draw a tsuki.

Ludivine turned around the corner of the other side of the smithy, waited a few moments, then turned back around. She popped her sable head around the corner, and didn’t have to keep walking to see the mark on the wall.

…”Shit!”

[Lillith]

The scuffle that broke out unravelled so quickly Lillith wasn’t sure where her heels ended and the usurpers began. They had spied one another from behind mutual hiding places, and stared dreamily from rock and hut, fishing hooks and brightly colours floats breaking up the arid landscape of the Deep South. They had almost passed each other by, but Lillith’s curiosity had got the better of her, and when she walked on by, she turned to see that the other woman’s had to0.

Her tanto had been delayed with deft and agile parrying fore-arms, and the other woman’s delicate, deadly and rose like form had been dodged and rolled from at every turn as they fought like tom cats under the glaring light of the late afternoon sun. The tension of their formative introduction still span in her gut as they exchanged blows, sweat and sand and jasmine body lotion rising into the air into a melange scent of battle. The distant howl of wolves and the clash of steel alongside the scuffle of well-worn heels in the dirt were precursors to something quite unexpected.

Lillith span on a heel and drove her blade forwards with a blunt exertion of her limited strength. The woman darted to the left, buckling her knees and with the same movement, bringing her right foot up into Lillith’s thigh. The wind left her clenched teeth as she buckled too. Her teeth clenched as a fist rose into her delicate chin and knocked her back fast into the dirt; her head cracked onto the ground, and her arms flew out and cast their blades free to the air.

There was a moment where time seemed to slow, and then ultimately come to a reeling stop.

“Whore’s are just as violent in Akashima it seems,” she managed to spit between blooded teeth, staring up at Ludivine’s face as she knelt her weight down onto her chest, pushing aside the ear flaps of her trappers hat to embrace her head with a pinch of a trembling hand. “I’d commend you,” she chided, taking on some of her sister’s bitter tongue in the process, “but I haven’t much silver to line your knickers,” the slap was a bitter reminder that she had been bested.

Whatever games the Duke was playing at, she had fallen victim to its unfamiliar rules. Democracy, money, freedom, war, they were all at play in the manual of Akashiman life. It was a shame, she thought, that she had not played it for so many years. Her make-up was smudged and her hair ornamentation was scattered here and there over the dirt, yet she remained as composed and strapped to the fading dignity of her station as long as she could. The fingers squeezed in response to her insult, and as the women leant in close, her hot breath broken with exertion, her eyes shining, her face, well, rather astonishingly pretty. Lillith smiled.

“I will see you soon,” she spluttered beneath the strain. Her opponent was too busy gloating with a cat call to notice the two ethereal figures approach her from behind.

With her back to the deadly shadows of Akashiman night, she had let her guard down – by the sun's light, the real and the chalk epitaph of their engagement on the South wall, the ninja had emerged from there hiding place. They carried two black bags between them, their faces concealed by traditional black and violet shozoku headdress. Their eyes, tainted by malice reflected the red mark that still glowed on Lillith’s painted cheek.

“It appears the Duke was not lying,” she managed to flick her head forwards with the last of her strength, and took a deep breath as her opponent turned to check her rear.

The heavy cloth tabi of the ninja scuffed the dirt and kicked up gravel with such speed Lillith simply saw them melt into air and befall the helpless, bitchy women like carrion diving to feast on the victims of the desert heat. Darkness fell over Lillith’s vision seconds after it did her opponent’s, who was lifted from her chest with great relief and ease of her burden in a flash. She felt her own body lift, and her hands snap behind her back into the small of her obi and its floral stitch. The cloth hood smelt of lavender and cloves, traditional warding flowers to keep away the spirits or keep them in their hosts.

Though she had intended to gain an audience with the ninja alone, to garner their aid without inference, it would serve her well to have someone with a better back hand than she had alongside. As they were jostled side by side to the unknown secret realm of the shinobi, who whispered in a dialect of Akashiman far beyond Lillith’s understanding, she could only wonder who the woman was, and just what the Duke saw in her.

[The International]

Ludivine awoke to oblivion. She liked oblivion, and she couldn’t help but smile as her eyes adjusted. Suddenly a cold blunt force struck her jaw. How dare she enjoy being captured? Her hands were bound uncomfortably before her with thick itchy rope, but her legs were still free. That was a mistake, but she wasn’t going to take advantage of that. She wanted to be here. She felt light, as if something were missing on her. It was times like this she realized just how much a part of her that sword was, but she was sure the Wakizashi wasn’t far away. Finally after what seemed hours, the veil was snatched from her face.

She sat bound in a chair alongside Lillith Kazumi. They shared the light of a hanging paper lamp. Beyond that fickle brown light was a void, and surely a myriad of eyes watching them.

“State your name.” A masculine voice came from the void in perfect Akashiman.

Ludivine’s was perfect too. “Who? Her? Lillith Kazumi. Don’t you know? She’s Akashima’s most well known Geisha. Give her a test run to find out why.”

“Her name is known to us, Coronian. It is yours we seek. Make jest again and we end this conversation in a manor you would not much appreciate.” The voice paused. “Now state your name.”

“Lan.” Ludivine stuck her chin in the air as she evoked her oldest and best cover. The half Coronian – half Akashiman… “Lan Wakahisa - Orchid of the forever young, apprentice of Kajami Inetori, member of the Inetori clan…”

That same blunt force, now revealed to be the butt of a katana, returned to her jaw in greater velocity this time. She whipped her head back, but returned with a crooked smile.

“Speak with caution, girl.” The tone of the speaker’s voice rose. “Lan Wakahisa is no longer in this world. The truth now, or we cut your throat much to the Lady Kazumi’s pleasure.”

Ludivine glanced over at the famed Kazumi, who had been bound just like her. Her kimono and hair were completely intact save for the little bit of ruffling sustained during their little sparing match. She had been handled much more kindly than Ludivine had been… for now. Her tilted head provided a veil of sable bangs for the local heroine’s eyes, but the subtle upward curve in the corner of her mouth wasn’t missed.

“I was brought to you at the ripe old age of sixteen, but after a good bit of hazing I fit in well. In fact I excelled a bit at this art of yours. For two years a trained alongside you all with bamboo sticks, wooden sandals, and silk gis. My strong suit was camouflage, and my weakness was my short temper. My favorite exercise was when we would paint our bamboo sticks different colors, go out into forests or abandoned settlements during a new moon, and go to town. We would return to the light, and use the paint to see who landed the most hits. I never landed the most, but I never landed the least… and I was improving before I was taken away and my mother sent word that I was dead.”

“Every member of the Inetori clan has a statement that signifies who they are as a ninja.” The voice was now trembling. “What was the statement of Lan Wakahisa.”

“The darkness is my light. In the light I am exposed, naked no matter how veiled, for all to see. Lesser beings of the world are free to mock and berate for as long as they see me. But in the dark…” She paused for a moment and peered into the darkness with a twinkling eye. “In the darkness I find solitude and sanctuary – a hiding place from judgment. It is the one and only entity that accepts me in spite of my numerous falls.”

Silence followed until it was broken by what seemed to be a sniffle.

“Please don’t cry, Kaname.” Ludivine pleaded to the dark. She knew what was coming next. That same blunt force arrived, this time to the back of the head, to knock her out, and to keep her from naming another one of them out loud. Ludivine slipped out of consciousness with a smile. “It’s good to be back.”

[Lillith]

Lillith listened, with considerable discomfort to the interrogation of the enigmatic woman she had scrapped with by the fading light of Akashima’s rugged southlands. Whilst she had not intended for her audience with the shinobi to be quite as perilous as it had turned out, with a wry smile as her blindfold was removed, she decided not to wish for it any other way. As her scantily clad compatriot was investigated, and her false claims proven true, the blindfold had come and gone so fleetingly she had taken to simply keeping her eyes closed to save her retina the trouble.

With the silence, however, she found the need to open them once more. The sickly light of the paper lantern still illuminated the pokey holding room, giving no hints as to their location except an ambience of danger and heavy dirt beneath painted toenails and well-worn geta. With protestation, and the revelation that the foreigner was indeed a disciple of a master well known to both Lillith and the Kazumi tribe, she was left breathless, and suddenly the centre of attention.

Her gruff jailer, a woman with considerable brawn to her frame and an odour not terribly dissimilar to rotten fish and madrigals leant closer and peered at her shaking form from behind a daemonic porcelain mask. If Lillith had been less educated, she would have assumed the creature was in fact a daemon given human form. The heavy breathing and badly hidden bra gave it away though.

“You are treading dangerous ground, Lillith Kazumi. Though pacts bind our kin together, they do not bind you.” The hoarse voice, though feminine, possessed a depth and malice to it that could only be given life by a man, or the hatred of. Lillith shook her head in half-hearted agreement. If she had not died three times since her last visit to Akashima, she might have gotten away with her name carrying enough weight on its own.

She feigned interest in her rival's health for a moment, tracing her dishevelled hair and satisfyingly bruising skin in the gloom. Though her own make-up was smudged, mimicking a crazed and maddened clown more so than a noble entertainer of the tea houses, she still looked a thousand times more resplendent in her coarse hemp bonds than the Duke’s afternoon fancy did in hers. She half wondered what had sparked that wave of jealousy that had made her so angry in the courtyard, before she had set off south for her clandestine rendezvous. Women were strange creatures, to be enemies one second, and in the thick of it together the next.

“I understand my appearance is somewhat unorthodox, but rest assured, my exploits, name and heritage should speak for merits by themselves.”

The interrogator nodded gruffly, and retreated. She seemed to have seen something in the gloom behind her captives, and when footsteps alerted Lillith to the truth in her doubts, she felt a sense of foreboding well up in the pit of her stomach. Her breathing went from calm and sedate to a panicked pace and started to crack her otherwise impenetrable wall. Had she chalked more than she could account for? The smell of vanilla and chamomile, a strange blend found only in uneducated Scara Braen tea houses who touted it as ‘the drink of ye east’ washed over her shoulders.

“Why are you here?” The stranger said. Lillith glanced at her rival's form, with a worried curl in her smudged lipstick.

“I came to gain an audience with the Tigress, to offer the Kazumi’s Statute in fighting a common enemy.” The word statute seemed to afford Lillith some more credibility than a simple assassination of a humble democrat had done. “Something greater and deadlier than old enmities and blood pacts stirs in the East.” The Tigress was the Common Tongue name for the head of the ninja.

The stranger appeared in Lillith’s vision from the right, moving without making a further sound than the one made when she had entered the chamber. She was a tall, lithe creature, wearing tightly wrapped black silk that was sashed in place with several bright violet straps. Her sinewy limbs and deadly tanto accompanied the impression that she could kill you without moving, and her sharp facial features, angular, jutting cheekbones set to perfect skin and piercing green eyes made Lillith certain that if she had been a man, she would not be alive to see the kunoichi long enough to meet his own maker.

“Claims made in earnest I am sure,” the kunoichi whispered through bitter teeth. Lillith examined her without making eye contact, and half wished she had not been so foolish as to make contact with the ninja without telling Arden where she was going. “I am not tempted to believe you, or her,” she nodded to Ludivine’s chair. “You both however made the sigil, and that implies you come with the Duke’s blessing.”

Lillith half wanted to make a mental note to thank the Duke, but given what she had seen thus far, she did not want to commit herself to prostitution. She struggled against her bonds to make a show that she was uncomfortable, but her plead fell on death ears.

“We shall see what The Tigress makes of you both, and if your claims have any ounce of truth in them.” She clapped her gloved fingers together, and before Lillith could protest, two red hilted katanas slammed into the prisoners, sending them to sleep for one more time and into the mysterious underworld of the true rulers of the dark in Akashima; it’s women.


---

Several things dawned in Lillith Kazumi’s city girl mind as she sat patiently at the foot of the Spartan bed that sat at the centre of a modestly decorated room in an unknown building. She traced the faded gold leaf vines that ran up the columns stood in the four corners, and wondered about how the many pieces of the puzzle she had been toying with fit together.

She was not particularly pleased with her rival's remark concerning her talent as a geisha. Her earnest and good hearted nature put that down to a lack of education about the tea houses and the okiyas, and the life one lead in their throng. It had been too long since Lillith herself had been taught the art itself, it had been perhaps six lifetimes, maybe eight since she had scrubbed the floors on scuffed knees and watched her older sisters become meiko, then geisha, then fade from her life altogether.

The enigmatic woman's perfect form slept on the bed behind her, snoring to the point that Lillith wanted to wallop her with a pillow to drown out the noise. Something stopped her that she could not describe. Perhaps she pitied the girl; her tale of her upbringing had struck a chord with Lillith. She knew that hardship, she knew that eternal competition beneath a fatal aura’s branch and a painful end that came to any who betrayed the traditions of the tanto and kunai. Perhaps, she respected her for her audacity. Any woman that had the guts and bravado to stride into the viper’s nest as they had done deserved her respect, did they not?

A heavy breath set her mood back to pensive. She tried to remember who the woman in violet was, but a pang of pain ran down her spine as she remembered what had stolen away the memory. Her kind treatment had ended there and then, and she felt every bit as pained and roughed up as she was, though she was subject to only half of the torture her compatriot had been in their interrogation. Sweat and dirt clung to her skin beneath the half torn kimono, and her geta were nowhere to be seen. From these small clues she surmised that they had been dragged to their new location. A flashback of the brutish woman’s daemon mask rocked her senses, tainted with an echo of cackling and impish guffaws.

She shrugged in the dark, and between her thoughts, pulled out the cheap knock off ornamental adornments from her hair and wiped the make-up from her face with one of the satin throws that had been left draped over the wood-worn chairs sat either side of the heavy, oddly unsecured door. The trouble with the Duke and his whore's motives would have to remain festering in the Scara Braen lass’s head for just a few more hours. A more pressing matter needed her attention. With subtle, shining eyes set on the door, and her own enigmatic and acrobatic form emerging from behind the feminine guise of a geisha, she prepared herself for the inevitable meeting with the mistress of the ninja.

There, they would both find out if they had wasted their time, and if they would both fall foul of the deadly shadows.

[The International]

It was Ludivine’s sense of smell that seemed to bring her back into consciousness presenting her with the scent of slightly burned ginger. Was someone preparing her favorite tea? It couldn’t be. Her ears, one in the air and one to the wooden floor, allowed her to pick up on the famed Kazumi’s cautious catlike movements, and the footsteps of all those in the building thumping like irregular heartbeats. Since this was a clan of ninjas their steps were quite light, but even they were no match for the laws of physics. The air was crisp and somewhat cool befitting the Akashiman summer nights. She decided not to open her eyes. Better to be presumed harmless by the geisha. This position provided her invaluable information on the movements of the clan she once belonged to. In fact, a set of footsteps was casually closing in on their location. Lillith’s froze in anticipation, or fear. Ludivine could only guess. One thing she did know as the door slid open…

“At ease, child!” A familiar feminine voice sounded out with bother.”No more torture is to come to you.”

… they were no longer in danger. Dumbass geisha. Did she not know the ways of the ninja clan? Was she not from this land?

“And Lan!” The resentment stung the ears like a yellow jacket. “Quit feigning slumber. The two of you are to bathe at the hot spring, dress in the attire set out for you, and join the Tigress for dinner and tea. Think long and hard about what you intend to say to her. Your lives depend on it. You are in our protective custody now, and you are being watched. Make no attempt to escape. Is that understood?”

Silence followed until…

“… Yes, Mekami-Sama.” Ludivine yielded as she popped up with a smile causing Lillith to jump out of her skin.

The hot springs were new to Ludivine, which meant that they had changed location since she had left. Surely someone would test her on that. The waters were hot enough to sting her skin like a thousand wasps, which forced her to enter timidly like a kitten. Like the entire enclave, it was lit by paper lamps that hung by the branches of trees or the suspensions of the roofs. These were noticeably brighter than that single dim lamp that set the mood in the interrogation room. They possessed a blue white radiance that was assisted by the lime sparkles of countless fireflies. Those glorified flies were hitting on each other. Perhaps the only person who hadn’t gotten any action today was the geisha who bathed awkwardly across the spring from her. Ludivine chose not to share that tidbit of educational humor with Lillith. Apparently they weren’t on speaking terms at the moment. Afterwards they dressed in black kimonos that had somehow been placed just behind them.

Just as they finished a masculine voice dropped from the dark canopy above. “Fourth door on the right. It will have the Tigress sigil.”

“Thank you, Ayumu-Ku.” Ludivine looked up as she adjusted her kimono, which was surprisingly just the right size. She didn’t turn to see how Lillith had reacted to the fact that a man had been watching them bathe all this time. When she was in her training period everyone, boys and girls in their heated adolescence, bathed together while the Tigress watched over them. It taught them that no target, man or woman, was beyond their blade.

They made their way along a wooden colonnade decorated with leaves. It stood as a barrier between the corridor and the quintessential Akashiman garden – bonsai trees, cherry trees and miniature waterfalls. Ludivine scoffed at it in disappointment. There was no reason for this clan to act as if they cared what other Akashimans thought of their enclave. All but a handful would ever see it, and it made their footprint all the more difficult to wipe away when they needed to relocate. The sliding door of the Tigress opened before they could place their hands on it, and before Ludivine was a pair of giant eyes of earthen hue that cried without even shedding a tear. The young woman, matching that of Ludivine in age, bowed. Her voice shook. “The Tigress will see you now.”

“Thank you, Kaname-Ku.” Ludivine said as she mirrored the young woman’s movement. She glanced over at Lillith who was in the middle of doing the same. A startled face revealed itself as she rose from the bow.

They stepped onto a carpeted floor and into a room as plain as the rest of the building. At least they kept the décor to a minimum. Ayane Etsuko, mistress of the clan, and the one the Kazumi tribe called the Tigress stood before them in the center of the room. She stood there in the same black kimono they wore, and she held it in place as they all bowed once again.

“Please take your seats.” The Tigress smiled with a hard jaw line and raised cheek bones resembling a Concordian Elf’s as she gestured towards three pillows surrounding her. Ludivine immediately made her way to the one furthest to the right. “No, Lan, you must sit here.”

Both Ludivine and Lillith looked at each other in confusion. “Does she not outranke me?”

“Memebers of the clan outrank special guests, with royalty as far as immediate relation to Lady Akashima being the exception.” Etsuko lifted the skirt of her kimono as she stepped over her pillow and made her way to an earthen hued paper wall in the rear of the room where a charcoal chamber awaited her. She used a wrought iron rod to prod the orange cubes sending incandescent embers up to the rather large ornate bowl that lay across the grill area. “Especially those we have not seen in such a long time.”

“My identity is confirmed?” Ludivine lifted her skirt as she lowered onto her pillow. Her eyes rolled in a mix of revelation, exasperation, and perhaps even a bit of relief. “My mother.”

“Indeed.” The Tigress kept her keen onyx eyes on the bowl as she mixed her tea within the simmering water. “She wanted to see how quickly you would follow her message here. I trust my former pupil will be satisfied with your swift arrival. Tell me, is she still deceptively youthful to the eye?”

You have no fucking idea, Ludivine thought to herself, but only let loose. “I and my two siblings have managed to sufficiently age her with due diligence, Mistress.”

The Tigress paused and turned to meet the gaze of Ludivine. “There are three…” She pointed a mixing tool at her. “… Of you? I have no doubts of your claims then.”

Etsuko handed her the bowl. She bowed and simultaneously lifted the bowl in honor of the host, and then lifted the white and blue bowl to her lips. The thyme, rosemary, and basil tickled her tongue with a cacophony of contrasting tastes, while the mint opened her nostrils to the world. She missed this, but it was missing something. “Your thick tea is impeccable as it has always been, Tigress.”

“However…” Etsuko said with a piercing gaze and a raised chin.

The last test, Ludivine hoped. “If you’re aiming to please your highest guest it would have included a generous portion of ginger.”

The Tigress smiled as she gestured towards Lillith. She wiped the bowl’s edge, then turned towards her and bowed with honor once again lifting the bowl in honor of the host. The bowl then passed form Ludivine to Lillith, and Lillith, being the proper geisha girl that she was, complimented the Tigress on her tea. “Indeed it is impressive, Mistress.”

They sat on the pillows as a group of servants, surely the clan’s newest recruits carried in a low wooden table and the first course, the yakimono – grilled salmon on wooden planks, Ludivine’s favorite. The second course, the nimono was a simmered vegetable mix of squash, lettuce, seaweed and various peppers, served in individual lidded bowls. The third and last course was the hassun, a tray of tidbits from the mountains and sea. All the while, they ate in silence, Ludivine’s least favorite part of eating Akashiman style. Her tongue had grown to love their cuisine more than any other on Althanas, but her ears had not coped with the sound of chewing that most other cultures allowed her to blot out with idle chatter. The torture ended with the Tigress, who was the last to finish her portions. She sent for the servants, who carried the plates off with a haste and replaced them with tiny shot glasses. Sake time.

The Tigress began the informal portion of the dinner. “Now, Let us talk about both your intentions and how you intend to win our services. We will begin with the noblewoman, Kazumi.” She awaited the pouring of the warm rice wine which they all drank in one gulp in ceremonious unity. “Lillith, we are running several operations against this league of corrupted samurai without profit. We do not seek it as we feel it is our duty to rid Akashima of them. For the most part we have been successful against them. Coordination with the Kazumi Clan requires that we make public many of our sensitive secrets and may put us in a position of vulnerability. What does Kazumi have to offer the Tigress and her cubs?”

“The Kazumi can offer you what they wish; I have no contact with them and no wish to do so just yet.” Ludivine tilted her head just slightly at the sound of this. This was the famous hero who had been doing good deeds all over the country, there was no doubt about that, but… What?

“I can however offer you the allegiance of the Tantalum, The Scourge, and the Janelle clan. When I settle the civil war amongst the Spirit Warders, I will no doubt acquiesce with the fellowship of my long lost kin as well.” Now the Tigress had tilted her head. It was the only show of confusion she had. She was an Akashiman through and through, but Ludivine knew who Lillith spoke of. Did she truly have sway in all those groups? Ludivine wouldn’t know. The Villeneuves rarely did business in Scara Brae. “Gold, passage, men at arms and the might of the blood mages would be at your beck and call should you so wish. It is a mighty exchange for a simple request.”

Instead of giving a verbal response, Etsuko nodded and smiled. She then looked to Ludivine.


“As for you, Lan…” She took another shot of sake before making intense eye contact with her former student. “Tell me this isn’t about Goro.”

“It isn’t just about Goro. It isn’t even primarily about Goro.” Ludivine didn’t dare break eye contact with the Tigress. It was the truth. There were many reasons as to why she returned, but the student mentor named Goro was perhaps the reason. But the other reasons… “What of the other members of my years?”

“All dead but the ones you have encountered already.” Etsuko averted her gaze to the white jar of sake, which she picked up and poured into her guest’s glasses. “… except for Goro. His body was not found so we cannot confirm him dead, but we believe we can safely assume his death.”

Ludivine nodded without blinking. “This is to be expected of men and women of our lifestyle. May their souls rest happily in the Great Nether. Did they go honorably?”

“Honorably…” The Tigress looked up after she finished pouring with brown eyes glazed in tears’ precursors. Her nose flared as she smiled and shed tears all at once. “And spectacularly. They were deaths I could only wish for myself, but it seems as though my destiny is not fulfilled as of yet.”

“Have you chosen a successor?” Ludivine dragged the shot glass closer to her.

“It was Akira.” Etsuko wiped her eyes. “Alas, he is no longer with us.”

Ludivine shrugged her shoulders with the first signature sly smirk of a fox the Tigress had seen all evening. It was then that she knew in her heart of hearts that this was the teenage girl that had shown so much promise nearly ten years ago. A superstition had persisted among the clans of Akashima that if the master of the clan did not choose the proper successor, the one chosen would die a horrible death. This cycle would go on until the master chose the one destined to inherit rule. Even Lillith could get in on that jest.

“You will both prove your worth.” Etsuko cleared her thoughts with a sigh. “Living as we live for the next three days as we set out on an attack against the Ronin. They are transporting what seems to be valued cargo across the southwestern countryside. We will intercept, and you two will be a part of the attack.”

Ludivine couldn’t help but smile.

[Lillith]

Lillith was infinitely surprised by the readiness of the ninja to go so eagerly to war. Foe unseen, futures uncertain, they marched by sun and moonlight to their destination. Unwavering advances gave the two captive women no time to rest, eat or think for themselves. Three days passed without event, night and day blurring feverishly into one long collage of progression. Through mud, mire and mountain, the ninja pushed without faltering. In all the strange circumstances Lillith had been in throughout her long lives, this perhaps was the strangest yet.

The group crested a hill which overlooked a long well-worn road spanning the horizon. When they arrived they had all stooped low, fifteen woman, ten men, thirty breasts and far too many frayed bra straps all neatly hidden from the view of the caravan that approached from the east. Lillith smiled in the shadows, thanking Tantalus for guiding them directly to their destination. Whatever information the ninja and the Tigress had obtained had proven its worth, and she keened her gaze on the murky shapes to see just how prepared she would have to be for the coming conflict.

“They ride so brazenly in the sun,” one of the elder ninja muttered, spit dripping through his lion mask. The metal was rusted and black as the heart of the gravest oni, twisted and contorted in a ferocious roar.

“They have nothing to fear.” Lillith felt her words fall on deaf ears and she shrunk like a wilting violet back into the flower bed of stronger, quicker, more confident warriors.

Though her promises and offers of aid and servitude had worked their magic in the mind of her captors, at least enough to keep her alive, she doubted they trusted her enough yet to give her the spotlight.

“Lan,” the Tigress whispered, before leaning over to the strange woman’s ear to confide a plan to her. Lillith’s jealousy peaked to a new high before it seethed out in her sweat and odour.

It had been almost two centuries since Lillith had been a ninja herself, so she doubted there was any echo of her name in the clan. No fortune had been hers in those days, and she had gained no favour with the mistress of the shinobi, nor had she forged great deeds and triumphs. Her tanto skill was a whisper through the ages of her only skill, that of killing and subterfuge.

“Wait…” she said loudly, spying something in the midst of the caravan that the brightness of the afternoon sun did it’s best to obfuscate.

She had not seen it until her mind had wondered to weakness and doubt, and the poison in her soul from the bite of the Jurugumo flared in strength in the depths of her chest. She felt a kinship with the shadow covering the caravan, a belonging, a drawing power. “There is something down there, something else, something…” she bit her lip, sucking the salt and dirt from her cracked skin with a nervous relish… “Inhuman.”

The silence rebuffed Lillith’s warning, which only made her more irate. Beneath the black silk cowl her eyes flared, her nostrils sizzled with flickers of metaphorical flame and her breath sauntered up the temperature scale until it threatened to burn through the cloth. She, like her sister, loathed being ignored.

Amongst the thirty or so warriors of bushido, she felt something hauntingly familiar.

“It’s an Oni, and not a weak willed thing – it is twisted,” she could sense it as well as she could see the aura covering the caravan. Though the trees and the sweeping plains carried with them a serenity born only of nature’s boon, at the heart of the caravan, something ugly and dark teemed with malefic.

“It’s a trap!” She shouted, but was answered only with a back hand to her cheek from the large daemon masked jailor that had seen to breaking her will only days before.

“Silence. The Tigress speaks,” and then silence fell.

Lillith guessed she would have to show the Tigress and the Ninja what she had to offer with a more practical approach. Her hands tightened around her red hilted tanto and her heart tightened in her chest.

“They are headed to Yanbo Harbour I wager,” the sultry voice of the ninja matriarch soothed Lillith’s growing irritation. “It is my belief that we should attack in four hours, when the sun sets and we have the element of surprise and darkness in our favour.”

It was a simple enough plan, and one Lillith would have supported had she not already done battle with a Greater Oni herself. She felt the poison throb in her heart, its presence suddenly announcing itself to her like a portent of doom.

“I say again, there is a-” the daemon masked ninja turned her head sharply, and Lillith paused for a moment. She swallowed her fear and continued more forcibly, her voice cresting the level between audible and giving away their position. “Untainted soul there…someone untouched or free of the Oni’s will.”

“No Ronin is free,” her fellow captive interrupted. Her lapse attitude besmirched Lillith’s composure. “We will not find out either way if we do not attack later, when the convoy reaches the chokepoint between the twin jade rocks.”

The Tigress shook her head and sternly continued to glare at the convoy with all knowing eyes. Lillith half wanted to chuckle at the woman’s attempts, she had garnered favour so easily but it was clear favour only came with trust when it was earned afresh. She crossed her arms satisfactorily and looked down at their target.

“It’s always nice to know I’m not the only one who is ignored despite my good looks…” She bit her tongue pensively and waited.

[The International]

In a matter of hours the Akashiman sky had transformed from a pale blue to a tapestry of warm watercolors that chased the sun beyond the horizon. Perhaps to the others the terrestrial stage before them was nothing more than a dance of shadowed shapes with ebony leaves swaying off of obsidian branches and tree trunks. The clan had situated itself behind a large onyx rock that sufficiently kept them hidden from the main trail. To Ludivine, the world was just as bright and detailed as it had been during the day, although the color had been drowned out a bit and everything seemed a bit… grainy. She looked up at her former clan members and wished for just a second that she didn’t have the ability. More than a dozen of them gave her dodging glances. She looked at Ayumu, whose long bangs almost managed to cover his maple brown eyes. He was the first not to turn away. Instead he examined those panther eyes as he made his preparations.

“Much has happened since we last saw one another.” Ludivine was always amazed at how the Akashiman language managed to force manners on her. She would not have been nearly as formal if that had been common.

“It’s been a decade, Wakahisa.” Mekami snarled as she sat on her knees with a tiny veil of in front of her. She took a thin long dart and dipped it into the veil. Then she stuffed it point-first into a long bamboo tube as she looked up at Ludivine with a scow. She was one of only seven of them who didn’t have their mouths covered by midnight blue masks, thus her disdain for Ludivine was much more prevalent. “More than a decade. Much has happened here as well. In fact I took a shit this morning.”

“How does that relate?” The soft voice of Kaname pushed through her covered mouth as she glanced at Mekami for but a second. She was charged with the critical task of mixing the blinding powder, a mix of sediment, tiny iron fillings from their private forgery, and the juice of red peppers from the country’s highlands. Her big eyes said it all as she looked to Mekami with confusion, and only for a split second looked at Ludivine before she retreated back to her task.

“I’m saying I don’t care to discuss what we’ve done over the years with this interloper unless she cares to divulge some information of her own.”

“The eyes, if you are wondering…” Everyone stopped what they were doing. The Tigress held a hand up to stop the subordinate beside her from talking. Even the ninja perched on top of the rock on look out looked down at them. “Come from my subconscious desire to hide from judgment by retreating to the darkness. I’m one half Valinthe and I…”

“You’re here to see your little boyfriend, Goro.” Mekami blurted out as her high cheekbones became flush red with anger. They appeared to Ludivine as dark blotches on ivory skin. The top student resembled an elf more than a human, as some Akashiman’s did, but her emotion always managed to remind people that the notion was too good to be true. “Well he’s dead.”

“I assure you, I did not return just for Goro. I returned to see Bron, Sueng Xa, Akira, and Hwang, all of whom are dead. Besides.” Ludivine averted her gaze. “Goro wouldn’t take me in all my promiscuity.”

“A good agent, she is.” Ayumu stood and walked over to the bowl of blinding powder and unsheathed curved katana. He reached into the bowl with a cloth to protect his hand from the powder and dropped some of it into his empty scabbard. “Telling us what she thinks we want to hear. Clever. Kazumi! Your tanto.” Lillith walked over and handed Ayumu the sheathed short blade. He proceeded to do the same thing with her scabbard. He glanced at her and dared to give her the welcoming smile Ludivine so desired. She could see it even through his covered face. “We use this powder upon first draw. If you do so with enough speed and a simultaneous strike you will blind your enemy even if you don’t hit them. I won’t give you much. Our scabbards were made slightly longer than our blades for this purpose alone. There is a myriad of things you can do with this in addition to fighting, Kazumi. You will see.” He handed the sheathed tanto back to the noble.

“I have an imagination.” Lillith said with an all knowing smirk as she took her weapon. She had gained her composure considerably since her little outbreak earlier in the day. Good for her. “I will be sure to show you as such.”

“Lan… Correction. Interloper. Your Wakizashi.” He did the same with Ludivine’s blade, but stopped to look down the scabbard. “Yours has a long scabbard like ours. Nice to know you remembered something of your time here.” He finished and heaved it into her chest.

“Enough!” The growl of the Tigress managed to silence all near her. Just in time too.

The signal came from atop the rock and preparations quickened. Some filled their scabbards and others dipped their darts until everyone was ready. All twenty of them knew their role. Some joined the sole ninja on his lookout atop the great boulder causing them to blend in and become nothing more than another part of it. Ludivine was among them. Those with blow darts situated themselves in the shrubbery along the sides of the path, and the last few stood on the other side of the boulder. Lillith and Etsuko were a part of that group. The thirty samurai approached in three columns of nine. The formation was only broken up by the horse drawn wagon on which three of them sat. Their movements were strangely uniform, not to the point that they were completely synchronized, but close enough warrant concern from even the most dimwitted. Ludivine’s enhanced vision allowed her to see the convoy in detail. The ninjas on their flanks aimed their blow darts at the first two rows. The others grasped at the pommels of their swords waiting for the signal… but something was wrong.

The untainted one wasn’t present. Where was he? Was Ludivine the only one that noticed this? She melted away from her cohorts at the top of the boulder and snuck quietly behind it’s wall where Etsuko, Lillith, and two others stood, waiting to attack. “The untainted one is missing, Tigress.” Ludivine whispered.

“Do those panther eyes of yours confirm that, child?” Etsuko said in a barely audible voice. Before she could answer the mistress held a hand up. That was a rhetorical question. “The eyes cannot confirm all things. If the last one truly isn’t there then all the more reason to attack.”

“He is an unknown variable.” Ludivine looked at Lillith, who averted her gaze. The Askashiman celebrity knew she was right. “All the more reason to wait.”

“Ah, and now we see your true motivation.” The Tigress looked back to her former pupil. “Your intentions are to prove your tactical superiority so that we may be used for the Corone Empire’s purposes.”

“I…”

“Do not underestimate my ability to gather information, Lan. The ninjas were the first spies of Corone. Nay. They were the first spies of Althanas.” The mistress crouched down. “Return to your post. They grow closer.”

“Please, Tigress. Hold off the attack.” Then a set of words came out of her mouth that brought her more sham than any deed she had done in her life. “What use would you be to me dead?”

A long silence followed. Once again Ludivine wished she hadn’t possessed her superior vision as she watched Etsuko slump her shoulders and hang her head in disappointment. “Functionalism. Such is the Lan way… or is it the Villenueve way?”

Her heart gave her chest a great rattle before it fell into her stomach. The three ninja with them froze while Lillith widened her eyes in shock. That was the weight of the Villeneuve family name. They were merchants. Good ones. The ninjas knew she was a spy, and now they knew her civilian cover.

Etsuko continued “Remember, girl, that I trained your mother all those years ago. I know more about you and your family than you may even know yourself. I have always been her confidant, and the fact that you required a use of us to return speaks to your character, or lack thereof. I had hoped you came to us for more than just a job for when you were a part of this clan, we served as your family. But alas… Return to your post.”

Ludivine’s steps were heavy… like her heart. She climbed the boulder and blended in with the other ninja and waited as unorganized words rushed through her head. Her eyes fixated on one point and her limbs became heavy. So this was what shock felt like? Lucky for her she still had time to recover as the slow caravan approached. The first of the Ronin finally began to pass. Their heavy footwear made snare like crashes along the gravel riddled path. Metallic plates of armor of obsidian and ruby struck against each other like out of tune xylophones. None of them spoke. They simple walked.

Suddenly the hisses of a thousand snakes came from the bushes behind them. Two samurai in the front grasped at their necks grunting in pain until they hit the ground. Others turned around and drew their blades ready to fight whoever was behind them as the darts bounced off their armor. They only saw the shadows of more Ronin. That’s when Ludivine’s group struck. They leaped into the air, their black silhouettes a blur in the tangerine sky. With a ring the samurais drew their blades and swiped at the air.

Ludivine landed below the silver arch of a diagonal strike. She could feel the air pulling up the hairs on her neck as her feet hit the ground and she immediately rolled forward. She stood with her right hand grasping at the pommel of her blade strapped across the small of her back. In one lightning quick movement she turned one hundred and eighty degrees, drew her blade, and made a horizontal strike. The blinding powder spread like a Fallienic sandstorm as all the ninjas that struck from above did the same. Ludivine stepped forward with her right foot and thrust the tip of her blade into the throat of the enemy before her. That sadistic facemask spit blood as he fell. Demonic possession didn’t save a Ronin from blindness. Grunts were followed by chokes as the other ninja moved in for deathblows. Some of the enemies didn’t even manage to unsheathe their blades before they fell. The ninja from behind the boulder emerged and joined the attack, as did the dart shooters as they ran out of their respective ammo. This was easy.

…This was too easy.

[Lillith]

With clumsy footwork Lillith Kazumi strode out into the melee. The other woman was troubling to Lillith. This was not because of her attitude, or her sullen ways. It was because of whom she was, or rather, who Lillith presumed she might be.

“Villeneuve…” she whispered, her voice as soft as lilac petals drifting over a koi pond. She had heard that name before. Duffy had encountered a man by that name, she was sure of it. Arden had encountered that name many a time in his dealings with the underworld of Alerar and indeed, at home in Scara Brae.

A second volley of darts penetrated the gloom as the ninja wove in and out of the Ronin with elegance and speed the likes of which Lillith could only dream of. Many of them fell to the flying barbs; many more fell in flashes of magical fire. She gazed down at her hip, where the augmented tanto screamed for blood in crimson silk and polished steel.

“I know your face now…”

His name had been Vespasian. She knew his face from a vague description Duffy had given her many moons ago. Unforgettable had been the word the bard had used to put his attractive qualities into perspective. Now Lillith understood why this particular Villeneuve was so stunningly beautiful. There would be many questions to put to her if they both survived this encounter, and if they both garnered the favour of the ninja.

She struggled to remember what had been the overarching theme to all the of the Villeneuve appearances through the troupe’s life. She bit her lip cursedly, hating the taste of defeat as she reminded herself that there was no time here for recollections that might cloud her judgement. She disliked the woman enough for being considerably better looking and for receiving the patronage of the ninja; she did not need any more excuses to slit her throat.

Turning her attention back onto the besieged Ronin, Lillith traced the outline of the closest uncontested swordsmen and keened her senses onto the act of drawing first blood. In the first village she had entered when they had arrived in Akashima, she had been very reserved in wielding her weapons against the oni touched. Here, she would feel no such reservations, and she was unbound from honour or duty in ending their tyranny over the free people of her home.

Though young and naive, Lillith Kazumi was anything but timid.

Her boots ploughed over the buoyant grass, which was quickly flattened by the dancing and spiralling acrobatics of her companions. In between the light steps there were heavy thuds of armoured salopettes and galoshes bracing against leaping black widows and razor sharp blades. Chaos reigned in the choke point, rubble and ruin colliding into a scene some might have considered artistic.

In between clashes of steel and cries in Akashiman Lillith could pick out shrill clucks, archaic screams and dark whispers of the ancient curses that the Oni used to entice mortals to step into the spirit world, and into certain madness.

“These are not like the ones we encountered in Hallow…” Her observation remained woefully significant, even as the wind dragged the words from her lips and whisked them away out onto the planes of the south.

They had been dark and feral. They were evil creatures. Their masters must be different for the ninja to strike them down so easily. Perhaps Arden had already succeeded in slaying the Komodo in Capitol City? She could only hope.

Amongst her fellow ninja she stood out like a sore thumb. As the daring Ronin approached she smiled. The flash of light from the embalmed dust on the edge of her weapon ignited as she unsheathed it at last. I almost screamed as the ring of steel leapt into the night’s air. Even though her fur lined hat and boyish appearance placed her as a foreigner, the grace and speed which she withdrew her tanto marked her clear as day as a native to Akashima.

The creature stepped back with a roar. Blinded to the mortal world the slits in its black mask flared with a purple light that only Lillith could see. It was gazing into the spirit world and right into her. In her heart she held a brazier where the jurugumo’s poison glowed brightly. She had only angered it with her gambit, but whilst he clung to his blade and swung it feebly to try and stay her advance, she second guessed his movements and ducked beneath it. The air in her lungs was squeezed from her as her tight clothing contracted about her waist and chaffed against her inner thighs. With a wheeze she rose from her dodge before she screamed an age old Scara Braen insult at the top of her lungs.

“Franck you!”

At the zenith of her ascension she turned her right blade in on its axis and flinched as its tip embedded itself into an unnamed enemy’s neck. Steel cut through tendon, weapon through muscle, death sentence through bone.

Cries of inhuman pain grew like a cacophony of death in the air around the Scara Braen assassin. With a soft thud she landed to the creature’s left side. Without letting down her guard she turned her head slowly to meet the bloodied gaze of the Ronin. Its aura was flickering, and she eased off the clenched tightness in her calf muscles. She traced the remnants of the aura it had possessed in its corrupted half-life before she let him fall from her blade into a lifeless bundle.

The deep vermillion, ochre and enchanted blue that made up his spiritual energy floated away with the gentle wind. She would have muttered a prayer to the ancestors if she had cared. She would have decreed forgiveness for his sins if her words would have found honest ears to bear witness to them.

She settled for condemnation.

“Go back to the spirit world and be consumed by your rage,” she snarled. Gobbets of blood from the neck wound had tarnished her attire as the corpse had fallen, and she took on a bestial form all of her own.

The ambush seemed to be going well.

“Too well…”

Lillith stood guard, legs and arms splayed wide and ears pricked to the four winds. Everywhere she looked as she turned slowly there was blood. Ronin and ninja alike had fallen, their corpses left for the crows and the hard wearing boots of unfortunate travellers for the morning’s sunrise. Two more of the creatures saw her and approached side by side to her front. She unsheathed a second tanto before stopping as still and lifeless as a stature.

“She is tainted,” they crowed together, daemonic masks nodding in sycophantic agreement with one another. “She is ours, she is one of us!” They cackled.

“There will be more of you for the crows to feed on than could feed all the birds of the world,” she wiped the blood from her face so that it formed smears and spiralling trails of crimson in stark contrast to her skin and snarled.

“A worthy sacrifice for your master’s rise,” they whispered hoarsely back at her.

Lillith raised an eyebrow in question. She hated riddles.

She hated riddles even more in the dark, in the cold, in the moment where life could slip from your fingers without warning or care.

“What of your master? Your master is dead, slain and scattered to the void.”

“We serve no Greater Oni…” the taller of the two levelled it’s katana at her neck, and the shorter joined him but brandished a spiked mace made of chiselled, bloodied stone. Both weapons had witnessed much suffering, both weapons partial to much injustice in the hands of their owners.

Somehow, they could see Lillith’s aura. She had figured as much, looking through a window into the spirit world to see where they resided would undoubtedly afford spirits the same opportunity to look at her.

Several shuriken whistled past through the gap between the Ronin and the assassin. Whilst they discussed theology, the other ninja talked heavily about death. The pieces of the puzzle that served only to confirm Lillith’s initial doubts about the caravan started to come together.

“Pray tell me I have not been so foolish…” she whispered, her guard faltering, her nerves spiking into electrifying discomfort.

Set against a dark night sky the masks of these particular Ronin glared with an inner light. Illuminated by their aura Lillith could make out the daemonic visage. The shapes reminded her of the gargoyles carved into the stonework of the Duke’s inner courtyard. They were ancient deities, kami and oni from before the Great War in Heaven.

That would mean they were…

“You cannot mean Ronin from before the fall?” The words sounded other worldly, almost impossible. They sounded maddened, enraged, drenched with fear and terrified.

Long ago, the samurai had cast out those amongst their number who had fallen from the path of honour. Even before the Ronin had become mercenaries, and subsequently been possessed and enslaved by the Oni as they fell from Heaven the wayward blades men had fled to the mountains. If these creatures did not serve one of the Greater Oni, then they served something much older.

She felt it now, lurking near the veil between worlds.

“We have to stop it…” she whispered again. She looked nervously through the confusing swell of bodies for Villeneuve. She would understand, she would listen, and she was not bound to honour like the other ninja.

A flurry of darts streamed in from the right the very second the two Ronin advanced forwards. Many clattered harmlessly from the black and grey plates of their armour but one slipped into the thigh. His katana fell to the beaten ground with a clang. It fell like the soul of its master had been wrenched from its rotten corpse. Seizing the opportunity afforded to her by her brothers and sisters, Lillith ran forwards. She crackled to life with the providence of her ancestral memory. The Aria afforded her the power to draw on her past life as a ninja, and with its oratory power inciting her to action; she became a crane on the chill wind which howled through the two tall rock formations.

“Ayah!” She flicked the tanto in her left hand down towards the mace wielding Ronin’s left foot. It span through several hefty rotations before it hit its mark.

It pierced the weak leather boot with a satisfying thud and pinned the creature to the ground.

Lillith felt the darkness in her mind swell with sudden power, but it was too embedded in her unconsciousness to register. Something in the world beyond worlds cackled menacingly without sound.

With an upwards kick Lillith’s foot struck the creature beneath the chin. The surprising forced knocked its head back before it could raise its weapon in its defence. The juxtaposition between churlish riddle and defeat at the hands of a creature it deemed weak and unworthy enraged its spirit. As Lillith landed and drew her remaining blade back with a tuck of the elbow and a gasp for breath, she saw something she wished she could have unseen.

She could taste the spirit world on her tongue. It tasted of peppermint and sassafras, and a hint of lemon grass steamed in a bath house.

It smelt of everywhere and nowhere, every place she had ever lived, every place she had ever dreamt of.

She rose upwards confidently. The terror in her chest was diminished only by her knowledge of what lay ahead of the ninja. With a snap she drove the tanto thrice into the Ronin’s chest before he recovered, and sheathed the tanto with the fourth movement. The blood scraped on the edge of the hilt and dripped down the red scabbard slowly, still warm for many minutes.

“Tigress, Villeneuve, anyone who will listen, listen well!” Her plucky accent rose above the din of the confrontation with ease. She was a stage announcer after all, and when she wanted to be, Lillith Kazumi could make sure she was heard.

She felt her words before she said them.

“Destroy the caravan and whatever it contains, before it’s..”

The veil between worlds snapped.

She would have said 'before it's here' had she been given the chance.

Lillith was knocked onto her back in agony as the proximity to the spirit world drew on the poison in her soul and threatened to suck her into the blue Heaven forever. A thin aura grew about the caravan that everyone could see.

Something rumbled in the clouds.

“It’s…here.” Lillith whispered with a dry mouth, arms arched inwards and head spinning from the heavy impact with the hard earth. Purple tendrils, spiders in the mist and harpies with ancient vendettas clawed at her mind. She could not register the pain as it overhaul her senses.

Something screamed without sound from within the caravan. Something was born into the world through the providence of a strange stone. A missing Ronin realised his full potential – their ruse was over, but their true purpose was revealed.

A purpose that made Lillith shake to the very foundations of her being.

The only things deadly than the Oni in Akashima were said to be shadows of the gods themselves…the older creatures, which lived off the fear and terror of mortals by hiding in the shadows when they dreamt.

Deadly Shadows.

Ancient games.

“Run…” was all she could say as she tried to right herself. She felt a warm hand take hers and she rose.

“Lillith…get a grip, what is it?” Kazumi span for a moment, until her head settled.

Villeneuve formed in front of her, and for the first time since they had met in unfortunate circumstances, Lillith might have even confessed to liking her.

[The International]

Just as the Akashiman celebrity implored them to run, the four sides of the carriage, which stood in the middle of the fray, collapsed one by one, revealing an oversized paper lamp glowing with deep crimson and the grey armored Ronin standing beside it. The other ninja could barely see what she saw in the midst of their average vision and preoccupation with the dozen or so remaining enemies, but Ludivine cast her superior vision on the untainted Ronin as he took a deep breath, and as his chest expanded, rivers of blood began to seep out of every crevice in his armor. “We couldn’t run if we wanted to.”

That much was clear to her.

“What must we do then?” Kaname asked as she helped Lillith to her feet.

That she didn’t know, even now as they watched the blood decorated samurai step down slowly from the carriage’s naked frame. If only her little brother, Vespasian, were here. He’d know what to do before the question was even asked, but all she could do was try to think like him. She took an inventory of the parties involved, thirty one Ronin including the grey armored one, twenty ninja including the less than welcome guests, both parties cut down to around fifteen. The untainted one didn’t appear until they were cut down. Why? Was he wounded? No. The way he was walking it was as if he had been empowered, invigorated, invulnerable. He hadn’t even drawn his blade, and yet he was stepping right into the action before him. Then she understood. That blood wasn’t his, but he was using it, and the lamp...

“We take the lamp.” Etsuko said as she calmly walked up from behind. She took the words right out of Ludivine’s mouth. “And then we run.” The Tigress gave Ludivine a look that said more than any words could, and then the two of them, along with Lillith and Kaname, entered the fray yet again.

It was here, in the heat of the battle, that Etsuko’s most pressing lesson came to mind for Ludivine. All warriors, no matter what their discipline, would be wise to take an honest inventory of themselves and their enemies, and fight with such in mind. As she charged at a group of three shoulder to shoulder warriors, Ludivine knew she wasn’t the most imposing fighter in a world of men much larger and stronger than herself. Therefore she never directly deflected a blow from any of these Ronin head on. Sparks didn’t fly when her blade met with theirs. Instead she partook in a combination of dodging and blocking. Every swing that came her way was diverted from its path only enough for her to get out of the way. She knew that, with her strikes and with her sword, that she could not piece any armor in this battle, so instead she took to precise attacks in between plates. A slice to the arm pit, a blunt kick to the area just behind the knee – whatever it was called -, and a stab to the neck just under the demonic mask, put the three down in no time.

In fact their bodies were stepping stones to the target, but just as she took her first step to the lamp, a sparkling mist shot her way, filled with tiny metal filaments, suffocating dust, and drops of red pepper. One of the ninja must have just now drawn their blade. She raised her forearm just in time to shield her delicate eyes to most of it, but it only took one drop of the pepper to sting her right eye, and a bit of the dust to wildly irritate her left. She had to move, despite her shock, so she took a few clumsy steps back and dropped for cover behind the carriage, but between rubbing her eyes, and occasionally fending a Ronin off with a swing, Ludiving saw something disturbing – Etsuko the Tigress facing off with the untainted one, whose katana was at least three inches shorter than its scabbard, and covered in tiny metal filaments, suffocating sediment, and little drops of pepper.

[Lillith]

As the clash of blades, the stomp of geta, and the beat of terrified hearts filled the night sky with its choral resplendence, Lillith Kazumi could only sway in the heat of the moment. Her blades, tanto sharp as the wit of kings lashed left and right, dancing through the motions of warfare and piously deflecting the robust katana of the demonic Ronin who would tear a great wound into the flesh of her home. The eruption of the oni, though initially mortifying to her sensibilities, felt almost like a distant memory now. An age had passed since the magic of the creature in the caravan had exploded, and another lifetime had gone by as she had tried to shrug of the aura and the night that tried to smother her in its wake.

If the gods themselves could not kill Lillith Kazumi, then no lesser demon was going to succeed with its raucous claws and fell choir voice.

She had gone through too much.

She had gone through it all for so long.

She had suffered, needlessly, and she would use that rage against the creatures that would have her suffer more.

“Noni, Sansa, Yuku!” she barked, her rugged voice clawing through the din of war with ease. The three nearest ninja, sweat laden and bloodied parried a strike and stepped away from their foes. In the moment of peace they brought themselves, they glanced to the usurper. She was young, by all means, but Lillith had just enough respect to count amongst the female tribes of the South duchy.

“Kazumi?” they echoed in unison. The moon shone against their pallid faces, glistening in the hearts of the few drops of sweat that beaded on brow and cheek alike.

It had taken a subconscious effort the likes of which would have defeated Lillith in less pressing times. Now, however, the lives of her companions and of the country depended on it. She put two and two together in the way only a woman knew how, and pointed defiantly to the Ronin at the heart of the melee, clad in grey armour, a death mask of pure and virginal white, and screamed his for his death.

“He is draining the artefact, feeding from it, living through it!” she did not know how she knew, but somewhere in the many long annuls of history that described her many lives in Akashima, she remembered something. It felt like a book had been poured into her brain, and a memory, and a warm and sudden fondness for rice wine. She was more whole now than ever before, even though she knew another of her past lives had to die, suffer, and perish for her to succeed here today.

The three ninja sprinted towards the Ronin without question. Noni’s iron fans, Yuki’s flaming tanto, and Sansa’s venomous arrows converged like a dervish of intent onto the grey Ronin, and behind a wall of acrobatic women, they were lost from Lillith’s perspective, and left in the hands of the ficklest woman of all, Fate.

“Walk with the mist, sisters,” Lillith prayed silently, before glaring at the caravan with fire in her eyes. Though one matter was tended to, and the pieces of the long puzzle were starting to come together, she could not help but feel idiotic in the face of such power. Though she remembered the grey garb of the Ronin resembled a spirit leech, she struggled to think about the historical relics of Akashima that could contain something so horrid and monstrous. She struggled to think how she had not seen this coming. Had her pursuit of the Greater Oni truly clouded her judgement this much? She shrugged, sprinted towards the now ruined wagon, and sheathed her blades to free her sweaty, blooded gloves for the coming investigation.

The cold chill of the wind left her as she clambered into the wagon’s tattered canopy. Darkness reigned whilst her eyes adjusted to the lack of moonlight, and then set themselves naturally onto the sphere at the centre of the wagon. Atop a small altar, which had four pillars and once had glass walls, there was a small stone, no bigger than a water melon, which gave off its own, strange, non-light to the world. Versed in the spirits of Akashima, even a young practitioner of the spirit warder arts like Lillith could not fail to see that within the artefact, there was an Oni most powerful, foul, and ancient.

There was a chorus of screams from outside, dimmed by distance, wind, and cloth. Lillith hesitated for a second, but reminded herself that even if her sisters died, she could save the survivors by…she smiled.

“The Ronin move with the artefact because it has an aura!” she clapped, then looked sheepish as she realised she might give herself away. “Of course, you stupid bitch, an Oni is a feverish, verdant, and potent source of power, but to use that power when it is sealed in a heart stone, one must be near the heart stone.” It was the same principle that made her carry the spirit of the Greater Oni the Jurugumo with her at all times. She unsheathed the spidery tanto and let its purple aura illuminate the innards of the wagon. She waved it back and forth like a lantern, until she was certain about her opinions. If she disturbed the artefact, and she was incorrect, she may well have jeopardised the tribe further.

She picked it up all the same, and felt its inner rage tingle up her arms.

“Arden will piss himself if he knew…” she mused, using her brother’s jealousy as a tool to find the strength to overcome the growing desire in her heart to drop it, and run the hell away. Dark spirits whispered in her ear, urging her to run, and keep on running, and to never stop. “Not today…”

She turned, and with the watermelon of malefic rock tucked beneath her right arm, which was remarkably light, she leapt out into the cold air and let her mind go.

She ran.

She ran.

She ran some more.

[Lillith]

Etsuko had lived through many wars, in daylight and in shadow, but never had she witnessed such augury and power. The Ronin, a grey blur in the moment deflected each and every blow. His blade, a cut steel and half rusted blade speckled with pepper and toxins clashed against every one of her strikes, ringing out over the din of dying men, women, and monsters foul.

Each time she drew on the ancient jiujutsu of her tribe, the Ronin seemed to be one step ahead of her. Her smoke bombs were negated by vaporising spheres, her poisons with antidotes, and her clone illusions with quickened pace and multiple cuts of the Ronin’s cruel katana. If the Kami were guiding the mistress’ hand, they were doing so blind, fickly, and without consideration for their actions. She snarled, spat blood as the Ronin’s fist retreated from her battered face, and took to a wide footed stance that lowered her body beneath the tall stature of her attacker.

“<I will gut you, sever the connection to your master, and send you to the shadows…>” was her only defence against the stinging, crushing, and painful swirl of the injury that felt like it had cracked her cheekbone.

The ebb and flow of the conflict around them both reached a fever pitch, and for a brief moment, the Tigress could not hear even her own thoughts, never mind the screams of her fellow men and women. Steel, sorrow, and sonata rang up into the darkening sky. The sense of failure began to swell in her stomach, a feeling she seldom felt, and seldom gave credence to when she did. This time, she curled her lip, she felt it truly. They were fighting a losing battle.

“<Tigress!>” Noni screamed.

A trio of shouts erupted through the wall of bodies that separated the Tigress from her only hope of freedom and escape. They seemed to move aside out of the galloping advance of three familiar faces. “<Look out!>” the scared and horrified faces of the sisters worsened.

Etsuko snapped her stare back to the Ronin, just in time to witness the fall of his katana down in two hands towards her. She crossed her blades into a nexus of defence before her, and felt the shock run down her arms and into the sockets of her shoulders. She had not felt such a blow for decades, untested as she was amongst the tribes of the south. Her face contorted into many different twisted shapes within a split second, until her knees buckles and the muscles beneath her light weight garb flexed so much they felt like stone.

“<You are undone,>” the Ronin rasped, with a voice that seemed to pierce Etsuko’s mind, soul, and body. It sounded as if it was spoken with acrid tongue, and lungs filled and fuelled by an aeon of pain and suffering and hatred. She almost felt sorry for the creature, until he began to bear down on her, pushing her cross-guard closer to her chest, and the deadly point of his sword closer and closer to her head. It shone sardonically in the moonlight.

The three sisters took no time in closing the gap between their mistress and she would be usurper. Blades, gisarmes and weapons hidden by midnight emerged in the advancing dervish, threatening the Ronin and his grey armour with a flank charge that would have routed lesser foes. Instead of retreating to defend himself, the Ronin simply turned to stare the three women down and crush their will.

“<No,>” he whispered. The sound rushed out over the valley like a fell wind, tearing at the hearts of Noni, Sansa, and Yuki without resistance. He turned back to Etsuko, who could only push up and watch her sisters fall down dead in horror.

“<No…>” she repeated, though her word carried a woefully different meaning altogether. Her knees landed on the springy moss of her home. Her heart sank deeper still into the ground.

The Ronin drew back his blade, and without thinking, Etsuko took the opportunity to let loose one final gambit before the pepper spice of his blade took its toll on her body. She already felt weak from the gobbets of toxin that had landed on her woefully undefended body during their engagement. Her blades rose like a lightning bolt, one piercing the frontal plate of the samurai armour with little trouble, and the other slipping in between his right arm’s shoulder plate and the breastplate. In the Ninja tradition, this was to gut, and to sever retaliation in a better skilled opponent. A swordsman, after all, could not wield a sword if he had no hand to do so.

“<My sisters die for a cause you could never understand,>” she screamed, her nose practically touching the sickly, anaemic, and pallid death mask of the oni tainted Ronin.

“<You die for one I live for,>” he replied, and without so much as a show of grace, respect, or honour, he closed into the blades, and the sickening crunch and scrape of steel against bone sent a chill that shattered Etsuko’s will down her spine. “<Wither,>” he seethed.

The shock of the miasma that shot from the Ronin’s mouth into Etsuko’s caused goose pimples to form on the necks of each and every Ronin, ninja, and insect alike. With a convulsion that bordered on the demonic, Etsuko flew back, and crashed into the ground head first like a comet crashing into the rocky wilderness of a mountain range. Satisfied, the Ronin had already turned back to the wagon to continue with his objective, sensing her life-force beginning to slip from her lithe form even before her own soul recognised it’s time was up.

The Ninja clan of the south stopped.

Blades lowered, hearts sank, and eyes welled with tears. Ronin fell in droves as anger pile drove blades and maces into undying, stone-like skulls.

“Tigress!” was heard a thousand times, wailed and screamed and reclaimed from the air with repetition.

With the scream, Lillith, now on the far verge of the valley suddenly found himself prone on the grass, rubble, and ruin of the desolate south. The watermelon shaped orb had been, up until the fell chill in the air had declared her mistress dead or dying, quite light. Now it weighed a thousand tones, and slammed her into the dirt in defiance of her wish to take it far from there, here, and anywhere. She grunted slothful, dusted herself down as she rose, and stared down glumly at the glimmering sphere.

"You're not the master..." she said worriedly. She turned her head back to the distant melee, and curled her lips with fear.

Her brow beaded with sweat, her heart raced, and in the shadows, she saw a thousand possibilities...each and every one ended catastrophically.

"He is..."

[The International]

All around her, hearts sank amidst a somber orchestra of clashing blades, even though, as ninja, they knew their Tigress would eventually die honorably on the field of battle, even as some foolishly rushed to her aid, becoming easy pickings for the possessed Ronin, and even as others did the same despite watching those before them fall prey to the moonlit trap that was the dying Etsuko. It was because of this that their fair clan had lost the upper hand. A few were dead. Many were immobilized. The numbers, which weren’t on their side to begin with, were now vehemently against them.

Ludivine didn’t fall into this trap, not because she was smarter, but because instead of being distressed or sad, she was fucking pissed! Her heart would fall like an anvil soon, but not at this moment as she rose to face the grey samurai. That was her Godmother he just struck down! She leaped over the carriage, insides trembling, fists clinched tightly around the leather of her blade, her voice releasing a great roar, a roar that gave her position away to him.

Good.

The samurai made a swooping diagonal swing behind him, at an angle gravity wouldn’t allow her to avoid, yet all he connected with was a black mist that dissipated in all directions.

“<You will fall like the Tigress before you… Wakahisa!>” The samurai’s distorted voice did not fall on deaf ears, even as the few remaining ninja resumed the fight of their lives. He knew the name of their leader! Much worse, he knew the name of someone as obscure as a temporary student!

In less than a second the mist accumulated, solidified into Ludivine, and she began a bevy of attacks on the grey warrior, a spark spewing strike on the gauntlet, a clash of blades, a blunt blow from her foot to his shoulder. Before, he was on the offensive, but not anymore, not against her, the one who would let anger trump her distress, and the agility of before was mysteriously missing. Had Etsuko sacrificed herself to soften him up for her? No. It was the artifact that did this. Despite her over abundance of stuffy etiquette, useless emotion, and detrimental volume – on a stealth mission – she was making the right move. Now to make the most of it.

Ludivine back stepped out of range of the sword just as its blood stained tip reached out and severed a piece of navy fabric covering her arm. She joined her cohorts – just nine of them – as they finally found their way to a grounded Tigress gasping for air.

“<You delay the inevitable, Wakahisa.>” the samurai growled as the nineteen remaining Ronin surrounded them.

As one circle closed in on another, the ninjas shooing off any bold Ronins with a swipe at the air, the silver light of the rising moon began to fade, bits and pieces of it literally disintegrating. The body language of confusion was everywhere, even in the grey one. Ludivine could feel that missing light in her fingers, tingling, pulsating, even burning a bit.

Wakahisa she thought with scorn. Was the warrior proud of what he knew? Was he trying to engage in a dialogue with her like he did with the Tigress? Neither he nor her allies would be afforded that luxury right now. She was not the Tigress. She was the Fox, and it was time to let him know. As the last bit of light disappeared, leaving nothing to see in the pitch blackness but her eerie glowing irises she said one thing. “It’s Villeneuve!”

All stolen light returned in the form of a blinding white hot beam that originated at the palm of Ludivine’s right hand and ended at the left rib of the grey samurai, who let out a very human scream of pain. Almost immediately, the other Ronin ran to his aid. Surrounded him and retreated. A hand grasped at her ankle. Etsuko. She knew she’d be after them.

But the Tigress had other plans. “Let’s talk.”


Ludivine looked down at the fallen Etsuko, gleeful eyes glazed over, smiling mouth red with blood, pale dimples loosing what little color they already had, and it was then that her heart sank, so much so that she could no longer stand, plopping to her knees beside her former mentor. “<Sensei.>”

“No.” the Tigress said between gasps of air. “Tongue of your family.”

“Okay.” Ludivine said with a throbbing pain in her head. Keeping the tears back was difficult.

“You were right. Kazumi was right.” She signaled the others to keep a lookout. “You two… are worldly. We are… We are… Isolated. And it is by choice. Foolish foolish… foolish choice.”

“And here you’re smiling?” she whispered in the smallest voice possible as she propped Etsuko’s head on her lap.

“You are here. I smile.”

Ludivine couldn’t hold it any longer. She let out a whimper befitting a lost cub as the rivers poured down her eyes. “I don’t… I.” She couldn’t get the words out without crying more. “I don’t… Don’t go! Please!”

“Oh child.”

“I came back for you.”

“Not the Empire?”

“F-F-Fuck the Empire.” This was embarrassing.

“Yes.”

“F-F-Fuck the Republic! Fuck all of it!”

“I missed this.”

“You were my friend.” Ludivine yelped. “If you go, I’ll only have my little brother. My little brother. Pitiful. My sister rivals me, my mother judges me, my father’s too unique to define, but... I lie, I cheat, I steal, I kill-”

“As you all do. As we do.” Her chest stopped moving. Yet she was still alive. Why? “He’s keeping me alive… To finish this.”

“But still I… I…” she whispered. “I’m lonely.”

“Ludivine. Lan.” Etsuko coughed up blood. “You flatter me, but I did not fill such an esteemed role as friend.” She pointed to Mekami, Kaname and Ayumu, all of whom had tear soaked masks, even though they stuck to her orders of standing guard. “They did.”

“They hate me.”

“No. They love you. Your departure, your deception. It hurt their hearts as much as mine will. But you… you can mend it.” She waved, bringing the nine remaining ninja to them. “I pass my role to two. Ludivine and Lillith.”

There were no objections. Not yet. Not while she was alive.

“If you want to see Althanas in all its splendor, go with Ludivine. If you want to stay and fight to save our home, go with Lillith. Both choices are noble, but tonight-“

“Tonight we avenge you.”

“Yes. Only if it is what you want.” Her smile now featured relief. “It is what he wants.” She allowed a silence to linger for a while before she nuzzled her nose in Ludivine’s lap. “Now I shall close mine eyes, go to sleep, and not wake up again.”



…”Goodnight.”

[Lillith]

The patter patter of Lillith’s geta, even with a suddenly lightened load hammered out a heavy footfall over the moist blades of grass. Only the beat of her heart was louder than her advance back across the rugged, broken, and wild landscape. The realisation of her mistake and the error of the Ninja in their endeavour to overwhelm the Ronin had drained the entire colour from her cheeks. She was a pale, and as porcelain now as her Akashiman kin.

When she finally regained the ability to speak, she swore, very loudly, and several times as she clambered up a shingle slope and rolled down the far side. A torrent of slate discs followed her, but hit the grass long after the agile ninja had begun her final leg of the journey back to the now quiet and docile melee. When she had left, the sound of swords clashing had been unmistakable in the air, the cries of companion and coward alike had risen into the dancing lights of midnight. Now, there was only silence, soft shuffling of nothingness, and motionless and defeated souls staring to the centre of the mass of bodies.

“Etsuko…” Lillith whispered, the breath barely escaping from her lungs before it formed a portent for the ages. She did not know how she knew, or why, but she knew all the same. She quickened her pace for thirty or so feet, before a force of nature, or perhaps a force that existed outside the natural world slammed into her chest. Like Etsuko, she flew back into the dirt, as if she had been struck with a miasma invisible yet fatal.

The wind did not leave her lungs quietly a second time. It left with the force of a hurricane, and left her wheezing, reddened, and writing in the dirt for the fading stamina and energy she had hoped to bring to bear to turn the tide of their futile war. In a split second, the dark sky erupted into a tapestry of light, colour, and madness.

“Oh god…” she screamed, though a scream of energy more than fear.

Above the melee, floating on invisible tendrils, a great, writhing mass of terror caught Lillith’s gaze. It was as large as three of the wagons the sphere had been contained in, and denser than darkness. Lillith rose, slowly, and tried to picture what it was she was actually looking at. Her knowledge of the multitude of kami and oni that had existed, however briefly, throughout the history of Akashima was potent, by all means, but this oni’s form was beyond her. Blackened wings, seemingly dripping with tar beat several times whilst she continued to wonder.

The screams of terror from the centre of the crowd rocked its form, and it writhed, seemingly in ecstasy as the drama below unfolded. Lillith looked up and down between the two, and smiled weakly.

“Blinded by hatred…” she said. As she said the old phrase, the name of the Oni that had been bound in the weighted stone sprang to mind. It was an old, bitter, and fickle idol of the most primal and baseless of human emotions. Fear was a weak oni compared to simplistic hatred, loathing, and jealousy. “It has been three centuries since I last saw you, Nikushimi.” The name rolled off her tongue like a death bed pledge. The assassin closed her eyes and knelt, pressing her right knee and the fingers of her splayed right hand into the mud and the lemon grass blanket of the low plain. She drew on nature’s ignorance as she thought long and hard about their last encounter.

It had been in a long lull between Ronin raids and spirit possessions. Deep beneath Tokyun, where the Jurugumo now rested, she had spent many weeks in vigil over the deep purple soul stone that kept the Greater Oni entombed in rock and reliquary. Her hatred for the spider demon had consumed her, and she had been unable to leave the creature’s side, for fear of it being released into the world once more. Her hatred had attracted Nikushimi, and its long tendrils had seeped into the ground and into the chamber, hungry for Lillith’s soul, black and bitter, and immortal.

She clenched her fist, pulled it up, and then punched her glove into the ground. The jolt up her arm brought her into a state of alertness, and she ran forwards, free of her doubt, and driven to acts that Ludivine and Etsuko would hopefully respect. No sooner than Lillith drew the tanto on her left hip, the great writing mass of Nikushimi seemed to turn to face her. Two tentacles zipped down from the mass, each one lightning quick, and each one tipped with a thousand poisons for a thousand ways to satisfy a man’s vengeance.

Lillith keened her gaze onto the first, and leapt to the left in a full, bounding, and agile side flip. Her feet padded lightly onto the grass, and bounced, and pushed her forwards into her run as if she had never been disturbed. The second crashed several feet in front of her, throwing mud, grass, and rock up into the air in a small circle around the impact sight. Before the clods landed, the grass had already begun to blacken, wither, and smoulder.

Seeing her chance drop literally from the sky, Lillith tensed the calf muscle in her right leg, sprang into a buoyant bounce, and then skipped up onto the tentacle so that she was already in a series of wide strides and sprinting steps when she began to climb the steep incline up to the body of the oni. The air started to smell of pepper, almonds, and death. It was a strange aura, though Lillith had encountered it before many a time, and it seemed to echo and resonate with after tastes of mint and willow bark.

[Lillith]

The oni roared, a scream that went unnoticed as its magic continued to mask it’s presence to all except Lillith and the grey clad Ronin. It whipped the tentacle, and sent a ripple down its length to try and dislodge its arm from the ground and the spirit warder from the stairway to heaven. A ninja born and bred, despite her Scara Braen ski tone and plucky, northern accent, Lillith leapt high and landed true on the far side of the ripple. When she reached the two thirds marks up the tentacle she stopped with a slap of her geta onto the moist skin.

“I have died and died again to fight hatred wherever it resides,” she spat, in common, so as to offend the creature on two levels. “Not today,” with a fury she did not know she had, she cut her tanto, instilled with the essence of one of the Greater Oni, and severed the tentacle clean in two.

Gravity seemed to fail her for a brief second as the bridge to the oni gave way. She dropped, and her cloth coverings turned ethereal as she fell. She reached for the tentacle, despite the blood, and clung onto it as if her life very much depended on it. The sound of terror, hatred, and the spirit world groaning in fear filled her mind with all the cacophony and dirges of the multiverses.

“For the Tigress!” she roared.

If she had been looking, she might have seen the grey clad Ronin stare upwards with a bestial snarl for just a brief moment. If his porcelain mask had been shattered I the conflict, she might have seen the energy in its eyes dissipate.

The wind whipped through Lillith’s tied back hair as she swung, rather unceremoniously down on her makeshift swing. It wavered as it descended, but between her added weight, and Nikushimi’s attempts to withdraw its splinter back into its hulk to heal, the assassin flew up into the base of the oni and, with a satisfying smack, a rush of air, and a splat, she vanished into its heart.

When Lillith crashed to earth with an unceremonious thud, several long, irate, and furious spurts of expletives slipped from her lips. Her tongue wagged words and parries against the dirt and dust that rose around her. It did not take long for beleaguered looking ninja, men and women both to swarm around her. Their looks of amazement were soon swept away by the look of worry on their faces. Though Lillith was spluttering, covered in ichor, blood, and glowing ectoplasm, they were apparently of no concern to her kin.

“Lillith-sama…” they sang in a chorus of worry.

“What is it?” she replied, pushing herself upright and batting away over eager hands to help her. “I just…” she glanced up into the rippling lights that marked the passing of the oni, and sighed. “Tell me what you need of me.” She gave the elder of the crowd a stern glare, which pressed for the information she required without having to speak further.

They parsed, like a turbulent sea before an ocean kami’s rage, and all pointed to the centre of the still melee. Lillith, silken skin marred and sullied by mud and blood shining still in the encroaching moonlight, could only gasp. She started to run, feet no longer silent over the farrowed ground, and heart no longer steeled against the aggressions of dark and tainted spirits.

“Tigress!” was all she could muster, a piercing bloodied cry that was more haunting than any sound she heard in the heart of the oni.

[Zook Murnig]

MQ: Deadly Shadows - Judgment

Story - 13/30
Storytelling - 6/10 The story itself, while interesting, failed to draw me in sufficiently and felt as if I were missing larger parts of backstory from both main characters.
Pacing - 4/10 In fits and starts, the story progressed from meetings with the Duke, to meeting the ninjas, to the bath scenes, and finally to what I can only assume was going to be the end of the first act, were this to continue. However, long pauses were taken and then leapt out of between these major scenes, rather than the story flowing from point to point.
Setting - 3/10 While it was mentioned and used for the most important bits, the actual surroundings and interaction with them was lackluster. The jade pillars were mentioned before the final fight, and then ignored largely until it became apparent what was important about them. Also, I'm unsure why there was a wild turkey in the Duke's chambers, and how one might have sex atop such a fowl beast (see Mechanics).

Characterization - 18/30
Persona - 6/10 I got to know your characters very well, I thought, in your opening posts, and even better as the events unfolded. Lillith and Ludivine each exhibit their own unique combination of honor and pragmatism, and these values influenced their actions throughout. However, you also confused me on each character. Lillith is regularly referred to as either being native to Akashima or noticably not, with little explanation, and what I presume to be her inherited consciousness complicated matters. Ludivine would have confused me similarly, had I not previously judged The Three Ouelletes, but your average reader may not have read that or any of your other threads.
Action - 6/10 The International's opening post was brilliantly subtle in its descriptions of coital negotiation. However, the rest of the thread did not carry forward with that precedent. Once the opening posts were over, the action settled into stop-and-go descriptions that felt decidedly average. The final fight, in particular, was difficult to follow until the very end, and did little to show the scale of combat taking place.
Communication - 6/10 There wasn't much wrong with your communication, though it did tend to lack flair through most of the thread. I would like to also note that it seemed rather sudden for the dialogue to differentiate between the "common" tongue and Akashiman with the use of flags within quotation. Up until the final scene, I had assumed that they were speaking the local language.

Prose - 16/30
Technique - 4/10 Each of your opening posts were beautiful and technical to the nth degree. Subtlety, metaphor, and word play were in full effect. It felt, however, as if you put most of your effort into your initial posts, and trudged through the bulk of the story with purple prose, repetitive wording, and occasionally awkward phrasing.
Mechanics - 5/10 As noted in Setting, there was an "ataman" in the Duke's chambers, which is a male turkey, while I'm sure that what was intended was an ottoman (a type of large footstool popularized by the Ottoman Turks). This was the most glaring example of my main complaint: word usage. Words were often either misspelled or spelled correctly, but homophones of the word that was probably intended. A few run-ons were in evidence, as well as quotation issues.
Clarity - 7/10 Despite the issues I have cited above, the majority of the story was relatively easy to understand. I had trouble with just how many ninjas and enemy combatants there were, and "ronin" seemed to be synonymous with either "possessed" or "demon." The latter issue did not get much explanation, and accounts for why you did not score higher here.

Wild Card - 7/10

TOTAL - 54/100
Lillith Kazumi gains 864 EXP and 162 GP
The International gains 691 EXP and 130 GP

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.