Kega Geru (Solo)

[Lillith]

Kega Geru (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VV-7UUg-iY&feature=related)
Disgrace

2665


The final chapter in the conflict with the Greater Oni.

All these lies placate the truth
In the mystery there’s magic
In the melody there are monsters
In the movement there’s myth

My magical madrigal

Hunting in Akashima's name
Spear tipped, flagon drained
To war!

If you surround yourself with negative people,
They’ll rinse you clean of your smiles

Duffy, you’re a bastard

Ruby, you’re a bitch

But both of you are broken things.

Then when am I?

[Lillith]

Part One - Northern Akashima, the Wold Wood
A Geisha's Rise

Fourteen days passed quickly, but painfully, for the geisha. She spent every waking moment, and even those treasured moments of sleep in the distrusting service of the Komodo. She tended to his armour, his heart, and his soul. She performed a multitude of dances, served a thousand blend of tea, and engaged in a hundred philosophical discussions; any form of entertainment or distraction he wanted, she had been levied to supply. Her code, and his oath, prevented either from falling out of favour with the traditions of their mutual home. Though the Komodo made many attempts to flatter her cold heart beyond the remit of her station, she chose to simply accept the compliments gracefully, and to move swiftly onto the next pressing matter.

This lack of reciprocation irked the Oni greatly. With each subsequent rejection his ire grew, and his wrath returned. Each time brought about repercussions for the other occupants of the Pagoda. In the night, meiko, artisan, and serving girl alike began to disappear. Guards on the north wall began to whisper of shadow ghosts, until they too became fewer in number with each passing day. Something was afoot in the autumnal mountains, and paranoia and hatred began to breed contempt for their unruly tyrant master. This, according to the plan designed by Lillith and her brother, was exactly as was intended.

Kneeling on her prayer mat in the small confines of her meagre quarters, the geisha bowed her head to the array of incense and jade statues that rested on a small shrine at the foot of the paper-thin door. The ubiquitous and traditional nature of the Komodo’s residence had amused her greatly. For someone bent on undoing the very fabric of Akashima’s cultural past, he was a creature bent on observing the very ways he was seeking to undo. The paper panelling that divided her from the other geisha was adorned with black oil scenes of teas houses, kami spires, and sprawling markets in summer bloom. Each was a picture to incite a memory of anchorage for Lillith, who used them to remember who she was, and why she was here.

“<May my mother smile on my fortunes and my heart kindle the flames of tradition,>” she whispered meekly, so as not to wake the other attendants up before the rooster called them to duty. As the Komodo’s principal geisha, she was expected to awaken long before the castle rose from its slumber to discourse with the dragon over breakfast. They had, for two weeks now, met atop the pagoda on the Jade adorned balcony to address whatever strange and tedious malady the creature had contemplated overnight. She was, by now, quite bored, but comfortable with the process.

She leant towards the shrine’s solitary candle, and blew on it gently. The flame danced, then waned, then snuffed itself before her virtue. She gave one final thought to the Karyukai, before she pushed herself upright and slid on the forefront of her feet to the chamber’s door. The delicate jewellery and flower adornments in her hair identified her as a geisha of the Tokyun region of Akashima, a simple jade pin with a wreath of gold and yellow shells on ribbons. Her kimono was sparse, a compromise she had earned with the Komodo’s insistence on her being naked as a form of punishment and enslavement. It was little more than a blood red nagajuban, or ‘under kimono’, but Lillith felt empowered wearing it.

Any step she could take towards achieving her much sought after victory was a mighty one indeed. This was especially true as so much resting on the success of her insurrection. Her trials here would lead to the conflict she had sought for centuries and the ultimate arrival of her allies to decimate the Komodo’s palace and his army. Before that final, testing, and deadly confrontation, however, she had much to do. She had much more suffering to endure, and much loneliness to craft into the jade dart that would slay the last True enemy of her home.

“<Morning to the lotus and the straw,>” she said, finishing her blessing with a traditional rural colloquialism, which in Tokyun meant ‘welcome to a new season’.

She bowed to no-one in particular, slid the panel to the left, and then silently, she swept herself away up the corridor, to the foot of the dark, and perilous stairwell that rose upwards through the core of the Pagoda. As the rooster began to crow, the Qui Lu Jin, the Dragon’s Guide, made her way upwards.

[Lillith]

Ante & Incense

The ascent through the heart of the Pagoda was a journey to be taken in darkness. The spiralling well housed no windows, and the brackets on the curves of the wall had long ceased their burning torch vigil. Lillith had found it strange that the Komodo, a dragon of fire, had forbidden flames from being inside his domain. Even the incense that was burned in the many shrines within its walls were lit in the forest, burnt half down, and then drawn into the grounds in shielded lanterns.

Every morning since she had arrived, for almost a week, Lillith had stumbled and tumbled up the climb. It had taken many days for her to get the timing right, to skip up each step without tripping on the edge of each granite slab, and a few days more to do it in quick time to ensure she arrived when the Oni decreed. Soon enough, she came to the Ante Chamber just beneath the large semi-circular balcony, which wa nothing more than a half moon buttressed room that faced north. On the far side of the curved outer wall, another stairway curved up three times before breaking out onto the balcony and re-joining with the sunshine and the fresh air.

The chamber itself had one purpose. Anyone wishing to see the Komodo, through servitude, service, or pleasure, had to anoint himself, and to cleanse himself of sin and sweat before the chamber’s altar. It stood in the centre of the half-circle, facing north as well, and before it’s many long burning incense and statues of oni, old and new, there was a small pleated and well used satin cushion. Lillith wasted no time in approaching it, bowing her head, and falling knees first into its embrace. The soft thud of skin against hallowed pedestal echoed up and down the stairs.

“<Oh Holy fathers, Oni of Heaven and Earth,>” Lillith paused, the words vitriolic curses coming from her otherwise pious mouth; she shook her head in shame, as she did every morning. “<Take my sin and soul, and cleanse it in your holy fire.>” With the first part of the blessing recited, she leant forwards like a dutiful Meiko and picked up the long bamboo cane, at the end of which was a wick, and started to relight each candle that had been extinguished overnight. In this chamber, fire was holy, and it was the only chamber the Komodo allowed it to exist. Lillith was half-tempted to drop it, and watch the forest burn to spite his face.

She had tried it before, and seen the potency of the Komodo’s magic first hand. It was a fool’s errand to try it again.

“<Hearth and home shall greet me when my servitude is done.” With a solemn tone she continued, lighting a candle at the recital of each word. “<The Oni give, and they take away, but in their service we thrive.>” The recital was a corrupted mockery of an ancient Spirit Warder blessing, used for centuries in the Comb Mountain to greet the rising sun, and to give thanks to the turn of each new season and the bounty it brought the villagers that dwelt there.

Satisfied that she had paid whatever ancestors the Oni hoped to ingratiate, she pulled away from the altar with a simple nod, a tuck of her knees, and a grunt as she rose against the tightness of her meagre coverings. The satin underlay caressed her skin and pushed in her ribs. She was not comfortable in tone, manner, or physicality. When she stepped out onto the balcony into his presence, the assassin had no doubt that her painted skin and jewellery bedecked body would only be but under more and more strain. It would be a long day, a long day indeed.

Her geta scraped over the well-polished, ancient floorboards as she walked to the second stairwell that trailed upwards. Before she reached the foot of the exit, she could smell the cold, dew drop air of mid-spring roiling downwards into the stuffy hedonism of the Pagoda’s insides. It was a fleeting relief from the oppression of her captor. It was the buttercup and pine tree scented glimpse of a freedom she would earn herself in the coming days. It was the smell that kept her sleeping sound and working hard to achieve her goal. It was all Lillith Kazumi had to cling to, in the darkest of hells.

She set her foot on the bottom stair, paused for thought, and began her last descent. With one last gasp, she braved breakfast with a dragon.