by DB King
The records hadn’t spoken of him since he went back north and inherited his father’s title.
This clan still exists. Hamada’s last known exploits took place less than twenty years ago, Shinji reasoned. The symbol was important to the vision. Shinji needed to find its source: Hamada’s clan.
But then the corpses moved, their lipless mouths opening in a silent scream, their pale and bloated eyes widening. The bodies moved in the crimson waters, almost as though they were swimming, hands and legs and heads bobbing up and down, drifting in the unnatural currents. The fetid smell of it all made Shinji grimace and wretch.
Why am I still here? Visions usually ended when he reached a point of clarity or understanding. He’d seen the flag and clan’s symbol. What else was there for him to see?
Everywhere he looked, he saw only death and decay. And so Shinji wandered, walking over the bloated corpses of warriors and peasants, men, women, and children. Their limbs were scattered about the place, and numerous spears jutted out of the crimson waters with babies hanging from its tips, their tiny chests run through as though they were little more than animals and beasts. Bowels and entrails lay splattered, half-sunk and floating above the putrid pools.
He glanced upward and beheld a blood-red moon, peeking out of the black clouds. Shinji’s eyes widened as he recalled the various historical and sociological lessons on Moyatani culture he’d learned from among his people, stored in their own archives, hidden from the rest of the world.
The Blood Moon was said to have first arisen when the Great Rakshasha had come into the world, screaming and raging, rearranging the faces of the mountains and carving deep furrows into the earth, where rivers now ran. His people remembered that day as the Day of Woes and Tears, when the blood of millions was spilled, but the Moyatani knew it as the Day of the Asura, when the first demon ravaged the world.
But what were the spirits even trying to tell him? The Asura was just an old legend, told by old men and women to scare little children, or to teach them what not to do if they wanted to be bushi. True, the legends painted the creature to be some kind of creation and destruction demon, whose power quite literally shaped the world as it was today, separating the continents and carving out the great mountain ranges, but such a power could not possibly exist. While many Moyatani believed it to be true, it was simply impossible for something of that magnitude to exist. Its very presence would upset the balance of magic in the world, creating spatial anomalies everywhere and making a mess of things.
If it existed, the world would not have survived.
Then again, the legends also told of the Kensei, a legendary sword-saint who was said to have challenged the Asura in single combat at the top of Mount Ryomen, where the demon was ultimately defeated and the world was saved from its eternal wrath.
The Kensei was another headache of a myth Shinji had been forced to study during his education, but the gist of it was that the legendary sword-saint only ever arose in a time of great chaos and evil, a time when the Asura was said to arise from the ashes of a million dead.
A million dead… the whole country’s about to descend into total war… Shinji paused, eyes drifting all around as the corpses writhed underneath the fetid, crimson pools. Millions would surely die, thereby fulfilling the first phase of the prophecy. But… it’s just a legend. There’s no real evidence for the existence of the Asura, even the Imperial Academy agrees that it’s just an old creation myth, passed down from generation to generation.
It couldn’t be about that.
Pale, Shinji bent down and reached for one of the corpses. He grabbed it by the face. It writhed in his hand, before its neck just popped off, leaving the head in Shinji’s fingers. He shook his head and dropped the still-moving head before turning and walking to a particularly high mound of groaning corpses.
“What are you trying to tell me now, spirits?” he said.
Just as Shinji finished speaking, the vision ended, and he found himself back in the forest, standing amidst chaos and devastation. Broken trees, deep furrows, upturned patches of soil, and huge craters greeted him as he blinked and steadied himself. The spatial anomalies were gone, alongside the malevolent presence that’d pervaded the woodlands, but the damage was done and the once-pristine forest was now a ragged field of destruction.
Shinji sighed. “Well, at least the whole place didn’t catch flames while I was under.”
His head turned to the west, where Hirata lay—where the malevolence had originated. Groaning, Shinji began to walk. The night was young, and the sky was clear. A part of him did not want to return to Hirata ever again. In truth, this assignment was becoming far too complicated and far too dangerous way too fast, and Shinji didn’t even want to be in this country of savages. He didn’t want to risk his life, or anything really, to save a few Moyatani brutes. He’d do it in a heartbeat to save a fellow Varnu, but there were probably only ten of them here, while the rest of his family was frolicking in the frozen fields in the north.
And yet another part of him, the part that enjoyed solving mysteries and chasing after excitement, wanted desperately to know exactly what had caused such a disturbance—the origin of such a hateful malevolence that even the spirits of the most ancient of battlefields could not mirror. No, that hate belonged to something that was already consumed by it, the living embodiment of fury and rage itself.
First, it was that monstrous kid, Murasaki Jin, he thought. And now something of this magnitude is just running around the place. Just what is wrong with this country?
Utterly confused about what to do next, Shinji just started walking. He didn’t know where he was going or why, he simply followed his feelings and the will of the spirits—both were very often intertwined. And his feelings were telling him to follow the trail of carnage and destruction, of malice and darkness. It would surely lead him somewhere, but he didn’t know where.
But he knew one thing: it certainly wasn’t leading him back to Hirata.
Chapter 15
“Oh, you’re finally awake.”
Jin blinked and saw a great gray blur. There were vague humanoid shapes around him, but they were too hazy for him to recognize anyone. The voice that just spoke to him from the left of his head, however, was definitely familiar, despite its echoing quality.
“My men found you in the river, asleep,” the man continued. There was a commotion coming from somewhere. There were probably hundreds of people here. The sounds reminded him of a war camp. Horses were present too, though Jin wasn’t quite sure exactly how many of the beasts there were. “You floated alongside blocks of ice and yet you weren’t cold. That’s some power you have…”
Jin tried shaking his head and rubbing his eyes, but the blur and the haze were both still there and neither of them seemed like they’d be going anywhere anytime soon. At least he knew he wasn’t surrounded by enemies. They would have killed him in his sleep if they were enemies—which meant he didn’t have to burn every living thing within a mile radius.
The familiar voice continued, “Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that I have successfully gathered a force of one thousand men. I have trained them to your specifications. The only thing for them to do now is to have a taste of a real battle. Harsh training can only get them so far. Don’t you think so, Jin?”
Jin huffed and chuckled. How did he even get here? What had happened?
“It’s good to meet you again, Yojimbo.” Jin smiled as he sighed and stopped trying to force away the haze in his senses. He was surrounded by friends, anyway, and Yojimbo—as strange as the thought might seem—was unlikely to betray him, especially now that he was awake. “How have you been doing? I hope you’ve been spending your funds wisely.”
The foreign merchant-guerilla leader chuckled. “Hah, do you take me for some lousy noble? Of course I spent the funds wisely. I’ve even procured over a hundred draft horses, and I’ve armed each and every one of my boys with adequate weapons. We’re not exactly a formal army now, are we?�
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Jin nodded. “Where exactly are we right now? I can’t exactly tell, since my eyes aren’t working.”
Most of the ambient noises and the conversations of Yojimbo’s band of former misfits were still coming to him as hazy sounds that made no sense.
“We,” Yojimbo began, “are in the foothills of the Yumihara Mountains, about twenty miles east of Hirata. No one can find us here. I’ve memorized every nook and every cranny, and I’ve weaponized all of them. When we finally strike, no army will ever see us coming—unless, of course, there’s some magic involved, but I can’t really account for that.”
They both laughed. Mages were difficult to strategize against. You never really knew just what they were capable of, and so the only option was to consider everything, which wasn’t exactly realistic.
“You’re quite far from home, aren’t you, boss? How’d you end up in that river? Did the war start a little earlier than expected?” Yojimbo asked.
Yojimbo’s tone was halfway between teasing and mocking, but Jin knew the man well enough at this point to dismiss such things. But then he couldn’t remember just what had happened. Jin had a talk with his uncle in the man’s office. He drank sake and went to his room and then…
Jin couldn’t recall anything afterward. His mind was hazy and blank, and trying to remember what happened actively hurt. “I… honestly have no clue. I remember I was in Hirata, and I was drinking sake and then—”
Yojimbo burst out laughing, slapping his knee. “Ah, sake… of course. There’s no need to say anymore, boss. The rice wine explains everything.”
Jin groaned. “Any news of passing armies and outlaw bands near Hirata?”
“Nothing,” Yojimbo said proudly. “We’ve cleared out all the outlaws and the bandits that were attacking traveling merchants and their caravans. Of course, we lawfully and legally confiscated all their stolen goods in the name of the lord of Hirata as we do work under him by proxy.”
Jin shook his head. Damn former bandits…
“But we’ve seen no sign of passing armies or anything that could be considered one,” Yojimbo finished. “Why? Has the war finally started?”
Jin nodded. “Lord Izayoi has called for a war council and my uncle is probably already there—I hope. This is the prelude to war. The eastern provinces under the Great Lord Izayoi will be gathering a host of war and, if I’m correct, will invade the western provinces. Once that happens, the south might just explode and war amongst themselves, while the lords of the northern provinces slowly march southward.”
Yojimbo hummed. “Yes, unlike the other Daimyos in Moyatani, Lord Izayoi has the distinct advantage of having the loyalty of his retainers. The lords of the western, northern, and southern provinces probably won’t even listen to their Daimyo.”
Jin nodded. “Izayoi is the only one in a position to launch invasions.”
“And so the war finally begins…”
“Yes… yes, it finally will.”
Chapter 16
“What will you do?” Yojimbo asked. “Hirata doesn’t exactly possess a powerful army—or an army at all—and this guerilla force can only do so much, before sheer numbers overwhelm us.”
“Is there a way to realistically end this war?” There wasn’t, but the question was rhetorical. Jin had always known that this war for succession was going to be the tipping point of everything he’d ever known in this land. The struggle to claim the title of Shogun would plunge the whole country into a war so bloody it’d seem like an act of gods. And Hirata would be caught in the middle of it. Arima made Jin promise that he would protect the people. Jin had every intention of keeping that promise to the best of his abilities.
The only problem was that even the best of his abilities might not be enough.
Yojimbo shook his head and leaned back. He looked serious for once. At least, he looked contemplative enough to pass as someone who was serious. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe, if the Great Khan came and invaded, your little lords might unite against a common foe, but that won’t happen for a while. He’s busy taking the rest of the world.”
Jin shrugged. Broken families, strangely enough, had a tendency to come together when someone from outside their family threatened another member. A similar case could be argued for Moyatani, but there simply wasn’t any singular enemy powerful enough for every single lord to come to their senses, put aside their differences, and unite for the common good. That was, short of this ‘Great Khan’ coming and burning entire towns and cities. But, as Yojimbo said, such a thing wasn’t going to happen for a while.
Heck, Moyatani might still be at war when that foreign conqueror finally arrived.
“My goal isn’t to fight the war,” Jin explained, sitting up and willing away the haze in his eyes. “My goal is to live through it with Hirata and its people still intact. That’ll be a lot easier to accomplish than outright ending the war.”
Even if he was granted all his powers from his previous life, Jin wouldn’t have been sure if he could end the looming war. The people of Moyatani were simply too caught up in their martial culture to ever consider simply voting for a new Shogun to be put in place. Everyone who was anyone was going to lay their claim on the prestigious title and damn everyone else for their ambition. Brute force wasn’t going to end anything. They needed diplomacy, but there were simply too many actors at play for such a thing to work.
Yojimbo leaned in and raised a single, doubtful eyebrow. “Again, how do you plan on doing that?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Jin admitted. “I can defend Hirata from invasions easily enough, but I won’t be able to do that for all of the next ten years—and this war’s bound to last for at least a century.”
Try as Jin might, the only real solution—one that would also fulfill his promise to his uncle—was to relocate the whole village somewhere that would remain untouched by the war.
Unfortunately, that was impossible. There was no place in Moyatani that would be spared the bloody onslaught to come. Everyone everywhere would suffer equally.
How was he going to keep his promise to Arima?
Jin continued. “There’s only so much I could do. The walls I’ve built will fall eventually. The weapons I designed aren’t going to win against innumerable hosts, and this guerilla army is only meant to slow down and greatly hinder my enemy’s advance.”
Jin’s fist hit the ground with a loud thunder-like crack. “I can’t save everyone. I can try my damn hardest and maybe even delay everything for the next eight or so years, but Hirata is going to burn eventually.”
“Ha!” Yojimbo’s eyes seemed distant for a moment as he looked out to the entrance of his tent. “A long time ago, when I was younger, I lived in a town that’d remained untouched by the Great Khan’s conquests. Soon, however, his mighty legions reached my home, and we were given an ultimatum. If we killed our own ruler and presented his head to the Great Khan within three days, he would spare us his wrath and peacefully absorb our town into his Empire.”
Jin raised an eyebrow. Yojimbo wasn’t one to share much about his past, and Jin was admittedly rather curious about this Great Khan the man always mentioned. Additionally, it was incredibly interesting to learn of other nations and cultures. The children of Moyatani were quite bland.
“And then what happened?” Jin asked.
“I was only seven at the time, but I remember how my mother took me with her as she and almost everyone else I knew marched right up to the king’s castle.” Yojimbo’s expression was melancholic and so was his tone. “Eventually, they’d forced their way through the guards and into the castle. They took the king and killed him without even bothering to hear what he had to say.
“My mother made me watch as they took his body apart and offered his head to the Great Khan,” Yojimbo shuddered very briefly, almost as though he was trying to control his own body’s reaction to the rather grim memory.
“Did this Great Khan keep his word?” Jin asked, genuinely curious. If that conqu
eror was going to invade Moyatani at some point in the future, it’d be prudent for Jin to know more about his enemy.
Yojimbo shook his head. “The Great Khan merely accepted the head and ordered his forces to burn the city and kill or enslave everyone in it. I survived by hiding under the corpses and sneaking out through the canals.”
“Ugh, so… wait, I’m having trouble following. Why are you loyal to this tyrant?”
Yojimbo laughed grimly. “Because it had all been a test, if the people of my hometown had stood their ground and stood by their king to defend their home, the Great Khan would’ve gladly offered them peaceful terms of surrender. Loyalty, he told me many years later, he wanted to see if the people were loyal to their king. They weren’t, and so he had them all killed.”
Jin nodded. That was a very sad story. Then again, he couldn’t exactly say he hadn’t done much worse things when he was emperor and was out trying to conquer the world. It made him briefly wonder about his past actions and the morality of them, but he pushed aside those thoughts and focused on the present.
“Was there a point to this story?” he asked the other man.
Yojimbo shrugged. “The point is that war is fickle and that people are also fickle. You might just find yourself stabbed in the back by the very people you’re trying to protect.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Jin had considered it, of course. Given his past, it was never far from his mind. Loyalty was a fickle thing that could hardly be relied upon. But no, the people of Hirata feared him more than they feared their own enemies. That, alone, was enough to keep them in line—not to mention the various things Jin had done to make their lives better.
