The War of Dark Fire, Part 14

 

by Shawn Carman

Edited by Fred Wan

 

 

 

“Kyuden Asako was the sight of my first visit to the Imperial Court,” Yoritomo Yoyonagi recalled before the court. “I remember being struck with the beauty of the art there, the serenity of the gardens. It was unlike anything I had experienced at the time. I would like to say that it made a lasting change in my nature simply from attending,” she smiled wryly, “but I suppose anyone familiar with me would be able to say that such a thing was not true.” She paused for a moment at polite laughter. “Still, I will never forget the experience, and there are few courts anywhere in the Empire that I would place higher in my esteem than that of Morning Glory Castle.” She smiled again and bowed before the Scorpion delegation. “Present company excluded, of course.”

News that the Phoenix military strategists estimated the Yobanjin army’s next significant target might be Kyuden Asako had had a profound impact upon the assembled delegations of the Imperial Court when it was first announced earlier in the morning, and throughout the day, many had offered their recollections of the palace and its grandeur. To Ikoma Asa, it seemed as if many had already pictured the palace burning, lost forever to the Empire like so many other landmarks since the war had begun. In truth, she supposed, it was not an altogether unrealistic assumption, but it was not one she found particularly productive. The recollections of the assembled courtiers, however, had been especially inspiring, and already the young poet had made notes regarding several new works she wished to begin based upon the evocative descriptions others had made regarding the palace. Asa resolved to visit the place herself, should it survive the war.

The Imperial Chancellor tapped the table lightly with his closed fan, signaling silence throughout the room. “I have been greatly moved by your tales of Kyuden Asako throughout the day,” he said, “and our honored brothers and sisters among the Phoenix Clan have my prayers and hopes that the majestic palace endures any attacks that might be levied against it by our most insidious enemies. Should the unthinkable happen, however, I would encourage everyone to remember the teachings of the Tao, which say that we must not forget the past, but that to set aside the trappings of it is to free our spirit for growth.” Here he bowed slightly to the Phoenix. “It is my greatest hope that Kyuden Asako remains intact, but should it fall, it will never be forgotten, and thus never truly be destroyed.”

Murmurs of appreciation passed through the crowd, and inwardly Asa was impressed with the Chancellor’s acumen. She felt as if a burden had been lifted from the group, and she could sense the tension dissipating. Bayushi Hisoka was a Scorpion, of course, and so while Asa did not trust his motivations despite his high-ranking position, she could not deny the benefit of his words.

“The Chancellor recalls well the teachings of the Tao,” another voice cut through the murmurs. “However, I wonder if he has ever had the opportunity to study the teachings of the prophet Fudo?”

Hisoka turned a questioning glance to the Imperial Advisor, who stepped atop the dais and took his seat, to the left of where the Divine Empress always sat when she was in attendance at the court. “Fudo, you say?” Hisoka tilted his head slightly. “I am familiar with him, but only in broad strokes. I wonder if your attribution of the title prophet might be somewhat… inaccurate, however.”

Susumu smiled. It was, as ever, a perfectly genuine expression that nevertheless left Asa feeling somewhat cold. “I am aware that the teachings of Fudo are somewhat controversial within the Brotherhood, and many refuse to acknowledge his teachings on account of the manner in which they question many long-standing tenets of the order, but I have personally always found them particularly empowering.”

Hisoka seemed interested. It was similar, Asa imagined, to a predator that had caught the scent of its prey. She made a mental note to explore that metaphor in her work later. “Please enlighten us, Susumu-sama.”

The Advisor’s smile did not waver. “One of Fudo’s teachings was that the memory of the past is a burden that weighs us, chaining us to our past and slowing our journey to our destiny. He suggested that rather than rely exclusively upon recollections of the past, trappings from those days might be kept at hand. Tokens, you might say. And with those tokens to serve as reminders, one could more easily focus on other matters, without the need to relive past experiences as the only reminders of joys already gone.” He shrugged slightly. “One might say that Fudo’s interpretation of this might be that Kyuden Asako’s destruction could lead to the Phoenix constantly struggling to recreate it, rather than embrace their future and move forward to newer and greater heights. On the other hand, should it survive, then they will be free to pursue their collective destiny without regret.”

The Chancellor raised an eyebrow, and Asa wondered if he found the exchange amusing. He was far to inscrutable to determine his actual reaction, however, layered as it was beneath the various deceptions that Scorpion so tiresomely insisted upon. “Perhaps this Fudo bears more investigation,” he admitted. “I find the concept… interesting.”

“Then it was my great pleasure to have given you food for thought,” Susumu said. “In the meantime I, like you, will offer the Phoenix my prayers and hope that the Shiba legions recalled to their homelands arrive in time to earn a glorious victory for the Empire.”

 

           

The western facing of the castle had been given over to him to defend, as he had requested. The Phoenix would never be so coarse as to display it openly, but he could tell that they had been enormously relieved at the arrival of his legion to assist in the eastern theater of the war. The impending arrival of the enemy at the beautiful Kyuden Asako was a source of growing fear for them, and they required assurance that the palace would not fall before the Yobanjin.

Akodo Setai had little assurance to offer them. He was a soldier, nothing more. He had been more surprised than anyone when his lord Shigetoshi had granted him a full legion to command and asked him to move northeast. Setai had attempted to decline, but his Champion would hear none of it. Privately he wondered if it was because of the ridiculous stories that men told about him. Embellishments, exaggerations, or outright fabrications, nearly all of them. He was no hero, no warrior of legend. He was simply a man who had been fortunate not to die despite the many opportunities he had been given to do exactly that.

The battle was going as well as could be expected thus far. The Lion had held the line despite being outnumbered by a reasonable margin. Setai wondered idly if, assuming that the clan carried the day, there would be more ridiculous stories told about him. He feared that there would. The most galling thing about the stories is that presumably they were told to honor him, and yet one day they would destroy him. Setai knew that his day would come, and when it did, it would be his own failings that brought him low. Somewhere, deep within him, there was a flaw in his soul, a bright red ember that burned hotter than even the most powerful shugenja’s spells. When battle was upon him, it longed to break free, to overwhelm his senses and render him little more than a slavering beast of bloodshed. For some years he thought he had quieted it, when he served in the courts, but when Doji Seishiro had died, it had returned stronger than ever. Already today, it worked upon his mind, painting the faces of hated enemies over the Yobanjin. The assassin he had failed to stop in his youth. The Dragon who had claimed the life of his father. And the Unicorn that had killed Seishiro. He could never kill them enough times to quench the fire.

“Prepare yourselves,” Setai shouted to his men. “They will press again, and soon. We will answer their attack with a countercharge, and break the front lines. Who stands with me?”

“Akodo!” was the response.

True enough, in only a moment’s time the Yobanjin line surged forward. Setai lifted his sword to signal the counterattack, but the signal never came.

Between the two forces, a sudden eruption of black smoke marred the battlefield, bringing the superstitious enemy to a halt. A form emerged from the smoke, a young man adorned with strange tattoos on his flesh. The man smiled in Setai’s direction, and the former Deathseeker had to suppress the urge to shout that he was not what he seemed. Laughing, the man gestured toward the Yobanjin ranks, and Setai stared in mute horror as entire ranks of the Yobanjin force screamed and dropped to the ground twisting in agony as their bodies warped against their will and ultimately collapsed into broken, misshapen heaps. He felt his stomach churn at the horror of it, but he did not succumb to it.

The sound of the madman’s laughter was even more horrible than the dying men’s screams. “Do you see?” he said, fixing his inhuman gaze upon Setai. “Do you see what can be done if you embrace the power waiting for you? I know you, I know what you can do. Join me. Stand by my side and together we will obliterate this rabble once and for all. The names of Isawa Fosuta and Akodo Setai will be on the lips of an Empire, and beyond!”

For the briefest possible moment, the ember of rage at his core flared brightly at the notion of destroying the Yobanjin utterly, and in that moment, Setai crushed it utterly, a feat he had believe impossible only a moment earlier. “No,” he answered.

Fosuta’s laughter was replaced by a confused expression. “You will not join me? You will not defend your Empire by ending the lives of these… these animals?”

“I will not join you,” Setai said. “I will never fall so low.”

Confusion was replaced with anger. “You petulant, arrogant child!” he snarled. “There will come a day when you will beg for the darkness, because it will be all that can protect you and those you love from an end so nightmarish you can scarcely imagine it.” Then, suddenly, the anger was gone, and a cruel look of humor replaced it. “Actually, no, that will not happen, because you will be dead.” Fosuta waved his hand, and the sound of screams returned, but this time from Setai’s own ranks, as half his men doubled over and collapsed onto the ground, writhing in pain.

Fosuta laughed again. “When this battle is spoken of, perhaps no one will speak the name Isawa Fosuta, but I promise you this: no one will speak of the victory of the Lion Clan either.” And with that he was gone in the same foul mist that he had appeared.

Setai tightened his grip on the blade he carried, a weapon that had claimed the lives of innumerable foes over the years, and of one true friend. “Those of you who can stand, take up your weapons,” he called calmly to the Lion around him. “If we die today, we die in a manner that no one will ever forget.”

 

           

Months ago, outside Shiro Mirumoto…

 

Mirumoto Kei’s charge shattered the already-crumbling wall outside the castle and plunged full speed into the opening in the attacking force that the ise zumi had made. Togashi Matsuo could hear bellows in the distance, and could tell from the sound of it that Hogai was still alive. Little surprise there, seeing as Yobanjin flew through the air, twisted into blood-chilling shapes every few moments. Of Vedau, Matsuo was less sure; he could neither see nor heard the large monk, and although the thought of his defeat was so unthinkable as to be almost completely alien, the young monk could not deny the possibility did exist.

Shortly after their exit from the castle, the three monks had separated into a three pronged attack designed for maximum disruption of the enemy formation. Matsuo had gone northwest, and his blast of icy from the frost dragon tattoo on his chest had taken a terrible toll on his enemies. Dozens of them had fallen, ensuring that he had created a large hole in the defenses that he could hear his Champion and her men exploiting even now. The blessings of the Dark Oracle of Fire were not inconsiderable, however, and many of those whom he had felled were rising, separating him from the main body of the Dragon force, driving him farther and farther away as he fought to maintain control of the situation. Many of those he battled did not rise, incapacitated by his precise and powerful strikes. Others did, however, and the benefit of numbers that they possessed was becoming more significant with each growing moment.

A glancing blow from a metallic gauntlet stunned Matsuo, causing his vision to double. He continued fighting, his body operating on pure instinct, but he struggled to regain his clarity of thought before the waves of raiders washed over him and buried him alive only to kill him an instant later. Something seized his left arm. He brought his right over to shatter the bond, but then it was taken as well. He struggled to free himself but the ringing in his skull was too great.

Would he finally understand the riddle of death?

There was a sound of wet surprise on his right, and suddenly his arm was free. He quickly incapacitated the enemy to his left and freed himself, even as his vision finally returned.

“Idiot monk!”

Matsuo turned and saw a warrior clad in black and blue, his face obscured with a metal mask, kicking a dead Yobanjin from his blade. “Daidoji?” he said, still foggy from the blow to his head.

“You hobble yourself by fighting without weapons! Do you think other warriors show such restraint?”

“I am an ise zumi, above the tools of war,” Matsuo said. “I fight as I do that I might choose to spare life when I can. Death permanently impacts the universe around me, and to levy death casually is to imprint myself upon the world. How can I understand a world that I take too great a role in shaping?”

“Fortunes,” the Daidoji swore. “Perhaps I should have let you die.”

“Why did you not?”

“I owe a debt of honor to the Mirumoto,” the Crane said, killing with every movement, nearly every word. “I could not stand by and watch you die, even if you deserved it.”

“You do not understand the way of the universe.”

“Don’t I?” the man seemed offended despite the absurdity of their circumstances. “You ise zumi wish to observe the world from afar, interacting with it only when and how you choose. You are not separate from us. You are not unique. You exist within the world and affect it with your every movement. Does your inaction not have as great a weight as your action? How many will these men kill if you spare their lives?”

Matsuo shook his head and disabled another opponent with a nerve strike. Perhaps it was the blow to his head, but he was confused. Did the Crane have a point? Why could he not think clearly? Did his actions, or lack thereof, serve as great a barrier to enlightenment as he imagined. Suddenly he longed to speak to his master in the temple in the Crane lands, but of course that was impossible.

The sounds of fighting were growing louder. The Dragon forces were close now, and the Crane would be safe. “Must… must think,” Matsuo said. “Need time.” He summoned the power of the centipede that encircled his legs, and suddenly he was gone.

The Dragon’s ruthless punishment of the Yobanjin continued unabated.

 

           

Death was here. Setai could smell it on the breeze, hidden beneath the stench of blood that was so thick. The blight the stranger had levied against his men had dramatically worsened the odds he faced on the battlefield, despite the similar curse that had been laid upon the Yobanjin at the same time. The numbers were simply impossible to overcome without some mitigating factor. Setai ground his teeth as he tore through two more enemies with his blade, and grimaced at the oncoming waves. Sooner or later one of them would wound him, and then they would fall upon him like a pack of ravenous dogs. It would be over, and after so many years of longing for death, Setai now found that he did not wish it. Not like this. He did not fear it, but within him had awakened a desire to live that he had not expected.

At the very least, he reasoned, the castle would be well protected. The loss of Yobanjin on this facing had been dramatic, and even when the Lion were overrun, the Shiba would be able to defend the castle properly. In that respect, at least, victory would be achieved, and so it mattered little if the Lion died.

The night was thick with smoke, as so often seemed to be the case when fighting the Yobanjin, and the dim light of a dozen fires seemed muted by the thickness of the air itself. Setai noticed a red light on the cliff overlooking the battle, and wondered idly if it might be one of the Phoenix priests preparing a ritual to aid in the battle. The light then leapt into the air and began descending toward the fight, and as Setai felt steel biting into his left arm, he wondered if this was what all men saw when they prepared to die, when their ancestors came for them to usher them into the next life.

The red light descended through the air and struck the ground behind the Yobanjin front line. There was an explosion, of sorts, although there was no flame. Dozens of the enemy were thrown high into the air, and Setai felt the wind on his face even as he ran through the man who had cut his arm. He did not know for certain what flavor of madness this was, but he would not lose the opportunity.

The impact drove away the smoke, and amid the fallen raiders stood a single man, bare from the chest up, a tattoo on his torso blazing like a beacon in the cover of darkness. “Hello,” he said. “I am Togashi Matsuo. May I join your men?”

“If it suits you I have no objection,” Setai shouted, assisting one of his men to his feet. “What are you doing here?”

“I have been observing these Yobanjin,” Matsuo said. “I experienced something of a… call it a crisis of faith during the battle for Shiro Mirumoto. I have been seeking understanding ever since.”

“Well I hope you found it,” Setai said, gesturing toward the regrouping raiders. “Your attack only distracted them. They come again.”

“Persistence is a virtue,” the tattooed monk said. “It is not always rewarded, however.”

“Not so, in my experience,” Setai snarled. “For Kyuden Asako!”

 

           

Doji Seihime paced the halls anxiously. She avoided the court chambers carefully, as she was not in the mood to hear the endless inquiries as to how her play was coming along. How the general delegates ever heard that she was working on a play to honor the Mirumoto family in the first place she did not know, but it had gotten to the point where she avoided the general sessions unless absolutely necessary. Under different circumstances, she might enjoy the attention, but at the moment, she was very close to being finished and she did not wish to discuss it. She was unwilling primarily because she had reached an impasse in her writing, and it was infuriating. She had made little progress for days now, and the thought of discussing a work with which she was having such difficulty was too great to bear.

Seihime rounded a corner and stopped, surprised to see a small child playing in the corridor. It was a little girl, lovely as a work of art herself, but it was strange for her to be here, so far from the court. “Hello, little one,” Seihime said.

The little girl looked up at her and beamed. “Hello!”

“What are you doing here?”

“My mother is preparing a new set of chambers for one of the important samurai visitors,” the girl said cheerily. “She said I would not be in the way here.”

“I see,” Seihime said. The child of a servant, then. She was too young to know not to speak to samurai, particularly when Seihime had spoken to her first. It was a victimless offense, and one she would not mention. “Be careful, then, little one.”

“Are you the lady telling the story?”

Seihime had turned to leave, but looked back over her shoulder. “What?”

“Mother says that there is a beautiful lady working on a new story,” the girl said. “I was so excited to hear it! I love new stories. You are beautiful. Are you the lady?”

Seihime could not help but smile. She was certainly not plain-looking, but compared to many of her fellow Crane, she had never been called beautiful. “I am working on a story, yes.”

“Oh!” the girl said. “Is it ready yet?”

“No,” Seihime said, frowning. “I… am having trouble with the ending.”

“Oh no! What is wrong?”

Seihime sighed. That she was having this conversation at all was ridiculous. “The ending is… predictable. I need something to catch the attention of the people reading the story. Something to give it more weight.”

“Is there a villain?” the little girl asked.

“Yes,” Seihime answered.

“You should make him have a helper that everyone thinks is a hero,” the girl said, playing with her doll. “My papa likes stories, and he says it is always better when there is a surprise villain at the end.”

Seihime thought for a moment. The valor of the Mirumoto was a grand tale, but it needed something to distinguish the family. Perhaps a traitor from elsewhere within the clan? Someone who aided the Dark Oracle, placing the Mirumoto at a disadvantage, but giving their victory even more meaning. Yes, yes that just might be what the story needed. “Thank you, little one,” Seihime said. “What is your name?”

“Oki!” the little girl beamed.

“Thank you, Oki,” Seihime said. “I have to go finish the story now.”

 

 

Irvine Kotei Winners: Military: Case Kiyonaga (Lion); Political: Stephanie Dane (Spider)

St. Louis Kotei Winners: Military: Nathan Hendrick (Shadowlands); Political: Violet Strickland (Scorpion)

Toulouse Kotei Winners: Military: Thomas Pecqueur (Crane); Political: Julien Harquet (Shadowlands)