Author: Harmon Cooper
Date: 2022-04-13 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: A destiny written, a legend reborn. Arik Dacre now has other reasons to pursue Nobunaga, the evil warlord of the Crimson Realm. Before he can travel south, he'll need to find the legendary Whispering Sword. With an entire realm to search, this is no easy task, and doing so will bring him in direct conflict with a host of new enemies, from the skeletal giant to the leader of the false shinobi himself, Sengum Minamoto. Revelations abound as Master Illusionist Hojo's strange illness worsens, leaving Arik to fend for himself. A solution is possible through cultivating a blend of Thunderaura and Ch
Publisher: Boycott Books, LLC

War Priest

The Whispering Sword

(Book Two)

By Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2022 Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2022 Boycott Books

Edited by Celestian Rince

Art by Daniel Kamarudin

Font by Shawn King

Audiobook narrated by Travis Baldree and produced by Podium Audio

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
Harmon Cooper’s Patreon

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Map of Taomoni

War Priest: Recap

Part One

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

.Chapter Eight.

Part Two

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

Part Three

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

.Chapter Eight.

.Back of the Book.

Other notable works by Harmon Cooper

Map of Taomoni

(Click to Enlarge)

War Priest: Recap

(Contains spoilers!)

Arik Dacre is just graduating the Sacred Branch of Wound Transfer at the Academy of Healing Arts when his school is attacked. His instructor, Master Guri Yarna, helps him escape, but not before the disciple is certain his parents and his sister are killed. Still with a willpower to survive, Arik is taken as a slave by a group of bandits where he meets the academy’s groundkeeper, Jinmo. Realizing he has to do something, Arik escapes and meets a water kami named Meosa in a cave, a kami that has been sealed away for five hundred years.

Vowing to save Jinmo, Arik heads to the border city of Omoto where he finds that Jinmo has been forced to take part in combat. Arik intervenes, but isn’t able to heal Jinmo in time. To hide from authorities and to get his bearings, he works in an infirmary alongside a tanuki named Master Kojiro and a nursemaid named Indra. Reuniting with Meosa, Arik decides to head south to Mogra, to the land of his enemies, hoping that he’ll be able to find a visiting lecturer named Master Nankai who once taught Arik how to use a sword.

Crossing the desert between the Jadean city of Omoto and Mogra proves to be difficult, and Arik encounters a mysterious kitsune-masked woman along the way who disappears the next day. After reaching the Double Blade School of Combat, Arik is confronted by Combat Master Altai, who tells him what has become of Nankai. He gives Arik a biography about Coro Pache and sends him on his way, back north to Iga, where he can train and then return to Mogra in a few weeks to compete in a tournament that will put him in direct contact with the warlord Nobunaga. It is in this biography that Arik learns of the Mask of the Fallen.

On his way to Iga, he meets a man named Hojo, who turns out to be a master illusionist technically classified as a Hidden Warrior, whose school has been disbanded. Hojo is looking for something as well in the Jade Realm, but he isn’t clear about this at first. He does, however, offer to help train Arik and to help him find the Mask of the Fallen. Arik studies some of the basics of the School of Illusion, including disguises and deception. Hojo doesn’t instruct him on Chimaura, but Arik does learn several moves from the master illusionist, techniques like the Autumn Leaves Strike, which allows him to easily disarm an opponent.

Alongside Hojo, Arik journeys to Iga where he faces off against several opponents—Istvan, a man from the north with a flaming hammer; Nyoko, a Jadean woman from the mountains with an axe; Tatum, a Crimson blade on a warrior pilgrimage; and Akamatsu, a retired Crimsonian blade. His training is cut short when Hojo announces that a Jadean businessman known as Kogu is in Iga, and he happens to have the Mask of the Fallen, which turns out to be a lie.

What Kogu actually has are documents that relate to the movement of Crimsonian weapons through the Jade Realm, documents that Arik uses his newfound infiltration techniques to procure. This puts him into direct conflict with the kitsune-masked woman he met in the desert, who easily bests him in a fight before disappearing. Angry that Hojo has lied to him, Arik returns to their place to get his things when he notices, for the first time, the effects of Chimaura on his own form. Hojo apologies, and promises to take Arik to a female shaman known as an itako who can get help them get the Mask of the Fallen. Arik is also interested in obtaining Coro Pache’s Whispering Sword, but because the text he has about the object is unclear of its location, this quest can wait.

They reach the itako, who has them perform a ritual in a space said to be the barrier between the living and the dead. Arik is able to obtain the Mask of the Fallen, but he also witnesses something strange in the process as he sees Hojo with his face melting away, only to return back to normal.

Wearing the Mask of the Fallen allows Arik to see a red line connecting from his weapon to the most fatal point on his opponent. He also notices, in wearing the mask, that he feels a sense of bloodlust when it is on, and that the mask seems to be communicating with him in some way.

Arik, Hojo, and Meosa head to Omoto, where Arik and Hojo part so the disciple can take part in the tournament in the Crimson Realm, Arik arriving just in time to join it. Now wearing the mask, and with his newfound combat knowledge courtesy of Hojo, Arik looks to win the tournament which will put him directly in touch with the warlord Nobunaga.

Even worse, Arik sees the head priest Master Guri Yarna with the warlord, his main instructor back at the Academy of Healing Arts. To rub salt in the wound, Master Guri Yarna is joined by Mori Ehara, Arik’s young sister, the only other person seemingly spared in the slaughter at his academy. Vowing to get even, Arik works his way through his tournament opponents, including a woman with dual blades who is later spared by Nobunaga. Even though he could beat him, Arik forfeits his match against Domen, the herder that once helped him in Mogra, which sends him straight to the chopping block. Anyone that survives their match and isn’t crowned winner of the tournament is executed.

Arik and the others who have lost their matches are led to a hole in the desert that is said to be bottomless. Before Nobunaga begins executing people, he turns his focus to Master Altai, the combat master at the Double Blade School of Combat Arts who helped Arik a few weeks back. Nobunaga claims that Master Altai has been working against him and subsequently has the man thrown into the pit. As he’s being led to his death, Altai shouts to Arik that Master Nankai, who is rumored to be dead, is indeed alive.

After being discovered by Nobunaga, Arik is thrown into the pit, where he is saved by Meosa. The two float along the side of the bottomless hole until the executions are over, and once Nobunaga and his entourage have left, Arik and Meosa safely leave the area, the disciple vowing to meet up with Hojo and continue his campaign to not only kill Nobunaga, but rescue his sister in the process.

The World of Taomoni

The world of Taomoni is divided into three distinct realms. The northernmost realm is known as the Onyx Realm; the central realm is known as the Jade Realm; and the southernmost realm is known as the Crimson Realm. The realms have been at odds in various ways over the last 1500 years of recorded history. Because it is between the two, the Jade Realm has often served as the primary place of conflict for the Onyx and Crimson Realm. While the aggressor in Arik Dacre’s story is the Crimson Realm, this hasn’t always been the case. Five hundred years before Arik was born, Coro Pache, famously known as the War Priest, was a man from the Crimson Realm who helped repel an invasion from the Onyx Realm.

Chi cultivation

There are three main branches of chi cultivation in Taomoni—Revivaura, Thunderaura, and Chimaura—as well as a lesser-known fourth branch, Yokaura.

Revivaura is what disciples in the Onyx Realm study. It has water-like properties, and advanced levels of it allow a disciple to do everything from grow new bones and organs to transferring wounds they’ve stored up.

Thunderaura is an electric, combat aspect of chi studied by people known as blades in the Crimson Realm. This usage of chi allows Crimsonians to amplify their strength and stamina, as well as their speed in combat.

Chimaura is studied by illusionists and shinobi in the Jade Realm’s School of Illusion. Little is known about this smokey aspect of chi, and Hidden Warriors rarely speak about it. From what Arik has seen, Chimaura allows someone to do things on a more psychological level, but there are physiological aspects to it as well, including the power to change one’s appearance. The shamans of the Jade Realm, known as itakos, also utilize an aspect of Chimaura to deliver their readings.

Yokaura is an ancient aspect of chi said to have been practiced by yokai and kami. Knowledge of its existence is mostly forgotten, and it is no longer practiced or studied in Taomoni.

Part One

.Chapter One.

“Flies and mosquitoes don’t distinguish between peasants and aristocrats.”

–A quote etched onto a piece of goat leather by Hidden Warrior Hirata Masuhiro de Iga of the School of Illusion, and later published in a collection of his carvings, Hirata in Stone, First Edition, Yoshimura Books, Year 1019.

If you can’t be wind, be water...

Hojo’s words came to Arik Dacre as he ran along the beaches of Katano, the round buttes lifting from the water making his surroundings seem otherworldly. The ocean brought with it an early morning chill, one Arik would have noticed if he wasn’t being chased.

Thwick!

The pain swelled as an arrow struck him in the back. He kept running, the disciple immediately calling upon his unique healing power.

An arrow wound, as long as it hadn’t struck an internal organ, was something that he could handle relatively quickly with Revivaura. It would also give him fuel for what would happen once he finally got into position. For wound transfer to work, he needed to be wounded, and the band of false shinobi pursuing him would soon learn a very painful lesson.

Thwick! Thwick!

The arrows landed just before his feet, Arik leaping over them.

“Mind your steps, my boy!” Meosa’s voice came to him, the water spirit always with Arik these days. They hadn’t separated since they reached the Jade Realm, since Arik had narrowly survived death at the hands of warlord Nobunaga in the Crimsonian city of Mogra.

Arik grunted, the pain from his arrow wound slowly starting to fade away. Soon, his body would naturally push the point out, which was something he had experienced before during his training at the Academy of Healing Arts in an exercise that they did weekly for one semester known as Arrow Wounds. “How many are there?”

“Ten. Ten false shinobi brazen enough to chase a poor, helpless disciple like you to the beach. They couldn’t have picked a better morning,” Meosa said sarcastically. There was something mythical about it all, especially with the waves lashing at the shoreline, and the rock formations pressing above the mist like mountains.

Arik reached his hand into the inner pocket of his robes and returned with the Mask of the Fallen, which he placed on his face, the band already tied off and fitted.

The goal was to get the shinobi as far away from the small fortress they were guarding as possible, giving time for Hojo to make his move. Arik had been presented with two options: be the infiltrator or be the distraction, and he had chosen the latter, not only to continue sharpening his skills, but because it better suited his current progress. Not to mention his troubles with infiltration the last time he had attempted such a thing in Iga.

Thwick!

A second arrow struck him in the back, Arik stumbling forward.

It was time.

The disciple came to a stop and turned to face the ten false shinobi who had been chasing him. The visual was faint at first, but then it strengthened, a line made of red energy attaching to each one of his opponents’ chi auras, the Mask of the Fallen’s bloodlust apparent, which according to Hojo was a dark aspect of Thunderaura.

Arik grinned beneath the mask, feeling its intoxicating allure as he waited for his enemies to strike. This would be a shoreline battle in the mist, one that would take place on a sandy beach, which would be both an advantage and disadvantage. Yet Arik was prepared, and now that he had the mask on, he was almost hungry for the fight.

“You are wounded,” one of the shinobi said, his face obscured by a lesser mask, a dark-blue hood over his head. “We can make this easy. You should not have visited Kogu’s estate. Why? Why were you there? Were you interested in joining our ranks? Were you trying to prove something to yourself? Someone else? Answer me!”

The two archers behind the false shinobi brought their bows to the ready.

Aside from the archers, there were eight bladesmen in total, Arik gravely outnumbered. Combat Master Nankai, the visiting lecturer who had first taught him how to use a sword, had only spoken a few times about engaging multiple opponents, always with the caveat that one should avoid it at all costs.

If combat against multiple foes was inevitable, Nankai said to do it in a space where you could confine the fight to one or two assailants at a time, the exact opposite of an open space like a beach.

“Last chance,” the leader of the group warned Arik, as a pair of archers drew their bows behind him.

The false shinobi started to make a wide circle around him.

What Arik was about to attempt was suicide, plain and simple.

****

Autumn Leaves Strike, third form.

The Autumn Leaves Strike was a maneuver that required insane precision, especially its third form, which was to take place after an opponent passed. Only then would Arik be able to strip the man of his weapon, taking down his first false shinobi in one attempt, leaving him nine more opponents and a backup plan that they weren’t going to see coming.

“You’re outnumbered. You’re going to die on this beach, kid.”

Arik huffed, his focus solely on the kill zones pointed out to him by the mask.

“I won’t go light on you.” The leader of the group approached with his sword drawn, Arik noticing the bead that the Mask of the Fallen had connected to his opponent’s forehead. Through practice with Hojo, he had become more familiar with the way that the power worked, and while it generally started at a person’s forehead, it quickly moved to their most vulnerable point, the line of energy doing just that as the false shinobi went for his opening move.

Stepping back, Arik brought the blade he had picked up in Omoto in a downward arc and cleaved the sword from the man’s hand, taking a finger in the process. Following the mask’s red line trajectory, Arik brought his sword back and drew it in a horizontal line, the tip of his blade meeting the man’s neck.

He kicked sand at the two archers just as they were pulling back, and rolled out of the way, the disciple dropping closer to the shoreline.

Thwick!

An arrow sailed right past him, closer to his head than he would have liked.

“Are you ready for me to help you, or not?” Meosa asked.

Arik ignored the water kami as he brought his foot back and corrected his form, just as the shinobi approached with a pair of swords. The man ran the blades across one another, the sound cutting through the rush of waves as they lapped near Arik’s feet.

Yet again he was given a target by the Mask of the Fallen. Bolting forward, Arik brought his sword back and came as close to the point as he could, practically shouldering through the shinobi. He spun, and as he did Arik drove his sword to the small of the man’s back, his opponent dropping his two swords.

He turned to the other shinobi, using the man he’d just impaled as a shield. An arrow struck his opponent in the chest, one that had been aimed at Arik and fired too late.

“They are close enough, disciple. They have been since your first sword fight. Katano is waking up, my boy. Fishermen will be down here soon enough; we will draw too much attention having a standoff with Kogu’s false shinobi! Imagine what Hojo will say…”

Arik kept the man pinned on his sword. He could smell blood, fear, sweat, and the ocean. The shinobi struggled, but it was clear that life was leaving him, and for a moment an instinct came to Arik, one that he knew to suppress.

He wanted to heal the false shinobi.

Being this close to someone who was fatally injured and not being able to heal him went against what he had spent his life learning to do, his very instinct.

But he had changed since then, and Arik wanted to make a point.

He began transferring what was left of the arrow wound on his back to the man, who cried for him to stop, the man writhing on Arik’s blade as he continued to use him as a shield. Several of the false shinobi stepped back, disturbed by the way the man wailed.

“Help! Please! Please, stop! Help me!”

“Have you made your point yet?” Meosa hissed at Arik. “We need to end this now!”

“Do what you must.”

A tornado took shape in the sea as Meosa’s featureless form, albeit one covered in muscles, lifted out of the water and slammed down onto the beach. The shinobi tried to flee, one of the smaller men at the back managing to avoid Meosa’s next tsunami-like attack.

Meosa drowned the shinobi that he had captured in his wake, water twisting around their bodies and pouring into their mouths and noses. Arik released the man he’d been holding and bolted toward the final fleeing shinobi.

He had a pair of kunai throwing daggers that Hojo had given him, but knew that he wasn’t trained enough to utilize them properly. No, he was going to have to use his speed instead, a dead sprint, predator chasing its prey.

Arik would catch the fleeing man soon enough.

Sensing his presence, the shinobi turned and drew a black blade, one with a serrated edge. He wielded this weapon with both hands, coming forward with a heavy strike that seemed to be amplified by Thunderaura, energy crackling around both of them.

How? Arik thought as he narrowly dodged the attack. If anything, these shinobi have only trained with Chimaura…

No, there was something different about his opponent, Arik recognizing a sudden sense of confidence in the man’s stance. His opponent came in again, twisting at the last moment in an attempt to throw Arik off. His cadence was that of someone who had trained heavily, Arik feeling his sheer power as their blades met, the disciple gritting his teeth as he pushed back on the blade.

Yet again, he saw the red line connecting the tip of his weapon to an inevitable kill zone on his opponent.

Arik sensed the bloodlust emanating from the Mask of the Fallen as he kicked his opponent’s legs out. A cheap shot. His assailant was cognizant enough to roll out of the way before he could bring his blade down, throwing the disciple off balance for a moment.

It was a strange attack, going from a more comfortable equilibrium to trying to strike someone on the ground. Not only that, they were still fighting on sand, thus limiting his movements to some degree.

Revivaura, his natural healing power, prevented him from becoming too exhausted. It modified his stamina and strengthened his endurance, but it did nothing to the physical sensation of fighting on a beach, the grit beneath his feet, his movements staggered.

This was a time to remember his training, what he had learned not only from the warrior pilgrimages he had taken part in, but the tournament in Mogra, his lessons from Hojo, and from Combat Master Nankai well before he knew where his life was headed.

Klank!

Arik went for his next attack in a modification of the skill he had learned known as Contesting Heights. He wasn’t going to be able to stop his enemy from coming at him; his only choice then would be to change the dynamics of this fight by infiltrating his assailant’s space, remembering that a strike must be executed with resolve.

Body-body initiative. Striking body, striking mind.

He knew what he needed to do.

Surging forward, Arik went for a series of quick hits, not strikes, an attempt to take the lead and hopefully overwhelm the false shinobi. His goal was to be relentless, to tire his assailant out, and force him to present a natural opening.

More sand in the air gave Arik an idea as he continued with his rapid-fire attempts, his opponent managing to block or dodge each one. Arik had been raised to follow the rules, to do things by the book, but that was before his academy had been razed to the ground, his mother and father killed, his sister kidnapped.

His sister.

Arik had a new goal now. Not only would he kill Nobunaga and prevent the Crimson Realm from pushing north into the Onyx Realm, he would also rescue Mori Ehara.

Arik hadn’t thought of how exactly this would happen, only that he needed to do everything in his power to make it a reality. But to get to Nobunaga, they needed information. Not only that, he needed a better weapon.

“Ahhh! Ahhh!” Arik attempted to distract his opponent by screaming. He followed this up by kicking fresh sand into the man’s face. His opponent’s natural reaction was to swat the sand away, a fatal mistake as Arik finally followed the red line.

Schlick!

His sword met the shinobi’s stomach and pressed out the man’s back. Arik withdrew it quickly and hacked his blade into his opponent’s shoulder, once, twice, blood beading on the sand around them.

For a moment, Arik stood over his final opponent, yet again suppressing the urge to heal him, ignoring the remorse he felt for killing the man in cold blood.

This was who he had become, something between a disciple and the student of a Hidden Warrior, a young man who had mastery over Revivaura, knowledge of blades and their Thunderaura, and was just starting to understand illusionists and their Chimaura.

“Look who’s the butcher,” Meosa’s voice came to Arik, the water spirit yet again all around him. The shinobi he had handled along the shoreline were all dead, their bodies pressed back and forth by the waves.

“I think he was using Thunderaura.”

“A false shinobi using Thunderaura? Bah! I suppose there could be some bleed over if Nobunaga is involved with this group, especially with Katano being a border city, but I wouldn’t worry. I must admit, you handled that better than I thought you would have, disciple. I was under the impression that I would need to intervene.”

Arik crouched before his opponent to wipe the blood off his blade.

He returned the weapon to its sheath and finally removed the Mask of the Fallen, feeling a sensation roll away from him as he did so.

Arik was back to being himself for the time being.

The air felt different now, his lungs filling as he observed the carnage that some poor Katano fisherman would soon discover. There was nothing pleasant about it, and while Meosa and Arik had been victorious in providing a perfect distraction for Hojo to gather more information, Arik felt no pride in what had transpired on the beach.

He turned in the direction of the fairy-tale buttes rising out of the water, the waves whipping at their stony foundations.

It was a noble sight, one marred by a collection of bodies, the image remaining with Arik just a moment longer than he would have liked. He wouldn’t let it bother him. He was long past the point of mourning the deaths of criminals, even if they were humans.

“Disciple.”

Arik ignored Meosa for a moment as he took a step closer to the sea. He could have sworn that he saw something in the distance, moving beneath the waves. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and steadied his breath.

“Disciple.”

“What?”

“Don’t snap at me when I’m trying to help you! We need to leave, unless you want to be here when the bodies are discovered.”

“To the meeting place. Right.”

“Yes. Let’s hope that our supposed illusionist has uncovered something of value.”

Arik turned to the north, where he was supposed to meet Hojo outside of the coastal city of Katano. Even if the master illusionist hadn’t uncovered anything, Arik had left a message here on the beach to both Kogu, the businessman helping smuggle weapons through the Jade Realm, and Nobunaga himself.

He was coming for them.

.Chapter Two.

“The War Priest understood what Prince Asahi meant when he said the ‘cost to farmers’. If the conflict continued, the Crimson Realm would need more soldiers, which would mean that the farmers in the fertile lands of the east and their sons would have to be recruited. Conscription would severely affect the crops over the next few years, reducing rations and potentially leading to widespread famine. It was a sacrifice that would prove necessary if the Onyx Realm continued their aggressions.”

–An excerpt from Coro Pache: Legends of the War Priest, Fifth Edition, Yoshimura Books, Year 1521, Page 154.

Arik Dacre reached a series of small ponds about an hour outside of Katano. As the landscape lifted toward the center of the Jade Realm, it became rockier, which was already noticeable even an hour away from the coast. The moisture in the air and the frequent rains from the proximity to the sea kept things green and vibrant, flowering vines and other plants scaling up the rock walls that surrounded one of the ponds.

Arik quickly located the cave that they stayed in the previous night, the disciple ignoring an inquisitive dragonfly with large yellow eyes that darted around his head.

“Ready,” he told Meosa.

“I’m sure you are. Leave it to the supposed illusionist to find such an inaccessible location. And you know how I feel about caves! Bah. Here we go. Brace yourself.”

Soon, Arik was levitating as Meosa used his power to lift the disciple into the air. They floated about twenty feet up before the pair shifted forward. Arik moved some of the flowering vines aside to find that Hojo had yet to return.

For a moment, Arik felt a hint of apprehension at this fact. Had Hojo been discovered?

Arik shook his head. He knew this couldn’t have been the case.

Then why is he taking so long?

Once inside the cave, Arik sat with his knees beneath him. He removed his sword from its sheath and lit a lantern, which he placed at the back of the space. The cave was cozy, yet it was dark and damp, Arik’s robes sticking to him within moments. To cool off some, he removed the top portion of his robes and let them fall to his waist.

“Getting comfortable, I see.”

Arik smirked at Meosa’s comment.

The disciple didn’t carry many things with him, but he did have a Coro Pache book, which was another reason they were in the western part of the Jade Realm to begin with. Arik was keenly interested in Moonagwa due to the truncated passage about the Whispering Sword. It was merely a coincidence that Hojo needed to go to Katano, its proximity to Moonagwa a plus.

Arik had read the passage so many times that he had memorized it:

<Moonagwa light court—

<Cylindrical crystal—

<Whispering Sword—

It still made no sense, and aside from a strange sketch that looked like a fan on the pages that surrounded the text, he really had nothing to go on.

If Hojo, for some reason, didn’t show, Arik knew better than to go back and look for him. The master illusionist had been clear about this, explaining to the disciple that he had to push on. If this was the case, he would head to the mountainous village of Moonagwa to continue his search for the legendary weapon.

His current sword, which he had obtained in Omoto, was a good blade, a weapon that came practically free once Hojo did the bargaining. Arik didn’t know why he felt the urge to find this legendary weapon, the one that Coro Pache had used, but he knew it was the right move, that he would be happy he had it once he returned to the Crimson Realm.

“Disciple.”

Arik nearly went for his weapon, but then saw Hojo standing at the mouth of the cave, the master illusionist’s conical hat with a slit in it obscuring his face. He wasn’t the only one that had been startled. Meosa flared up, soaking Arik with even more water as he settled.

“That’s no way to announce yourself!”

“I apologize, kami.” Hojo sat, his hat remaining on his head.

Meosa grumbled, but didn’t say anything else as Hojo produced a few documents from his robes. Hojo was superstitious when it came to Meosa and never referred to him by his real name, something that the water spirit had grown used to by now, yet something that still irked him.

“We are too late.”

“How so?” Arik asked the master illusionist.

“Tayaura has already been here.”

Hojo was referring to his estranged daughter, whom he had trained himself. Arik had once encountered her in the desert between Omoto and the city of Mogra, where the square-hats lived. She had been wearing a kitsune mask at the time, and his second encounter with her, in the courtyard of Iga, had been less friendly.

“How do you know?”

Hojo unrolled one of the scrolls and showed Arik a red mark on the corner of the parchment. “This was her doing.”

“The red mark?”

“Her signal that these documents have been copied.”

“Like father, like daughter, both of you operate in baffling ways. Why are we going after this businessman again? I get why we would come to this region to look for the Whispering Sword, but killing a troupe of false shinobi will do nothing to Nobunaga’s numbers in the end.”

Hojo produced a small bag of cold dumplings. He opened the bag and ate one, and then offered the open bag to Arik. “I saw your handiwork.”

Arik took a dumpling, and once he was finished chewing it, he spoke. “It worked. Meosa and I were able to handle them, as discussed.”

Hojo grunted a positive response.

“One of them was using Thunderaura. Or at least he had been trained in the art.”

“I see.” Hojo ate another dumpling. “And the mask? How is it behaving?”

“It’s…” Arik hesitated. “It does what it is supposed to do.”

“Coro Pache couldn’t tolerate it, but you seem to be able to. This is a good thing, disciple. As long as you don’t let it pull you into madness.”

Arik remembered how he’d felt earlier on the beach, this urge to keep fighting, to overpower anyone who got in his way. While he experienced something like that before in the throes of combat, it was different in his fight against the false shinobi. It felt stronger.

“I will be fine,” he finally told Hojo.

“And it is still your intent to murder Nobunaga as soon as you can?”

“And rescue my sister, yes,” said Arik, not liking the way that Hojo had phrased this. The master illusionist had been acting even more peculiar as of late, his hands sometimes twitching, Hojo prone to waking with a gasp, his brow covered in sweat. He was still hyper quiet, calm, and moved like a cat, which only made his occasional twitching more noticeable.

“And if you succeed, disciple, then what?” Hojo asked after a long pause.

“Then, I return to the Onyx Realm.”

This statement brought a bitter laugh from Meosa. “You don’t just kill the leader of the Crimson Realm—and Enenra, the kami that has joined him, I should add—and simply return home as if nothing has happened, my boy.”

“I don’t know another way.”

Hojo looked up at Arik. “There are always other options. One would be to continue to improve your command over chi. You’re talented when it comes to healing, and your combat powers have improved. You have even come to understand certain aspects of Chimaura.”

This statement reminded Arik what it was like to briefly see his own face morph, how it had blurred into the face of someone else. He also noticed strange things about Hojo, the way he could manipulate people and always seemed to be a step ahead of anything that was presented to him.

It had to be because of Chimaura.

Chi was commonly interpreted in three different ways across Taomoni—Revivaura was the interpretation of its healing aspect; Thunderaura, the combat aspect; Chimaura, an aspect that Arik hadn’t yet grasped, but knew it had something to do with psychological control, or better, manipulation any given situation; and finally Yokaura, a new aspect of chi that Arik knew little about.

It was a strange pairing, a disciple like him with a master illusionist like Hojo, not to mention the ancient kami. Thus far, it had worked. But Arik still couldn’t fully trust the man who had mastered Chimaura, and Arik still had his own motives for wanting to grow stronger, motives that had changed upon seeing his sister.

“Another option would be to disappear.” Hojo’s throat quivered to some degree. While Arik couldn’t quite see his face, the lantern did provide enough light for him to see the master illusionist’s throat, his hand starting to shake. “It is not a coward’s way, you know, disappearing.”

“Even I can’t get behind that,” Meosa told Hojo. “Maybe if his sister wasn’t there with Nobunaga, that would be one thing. But, I have to agree with the disciple. He must rescue her. But after that? That’s what I’m asking for you to think about. What happens after? You won’t be able to just run home if you cut off the head of the snake. If you are able to accomplish this task, you will be pursued. The War Priest did things differently.”

“I’m not the War Priest.”

Hojo nodded. “Be that as it may, you wear his mask, and you’re now searching for his weapon. I’ve already told you in Omoto that I will help you achieve your goal, but I need to find my daughter, and I want to make sure the man responsible for ruining the School of Illusion is dealt with.”

“Sengum Minamoto.”

“Yes, Sengum, disciple.”

Meosa shifted his watery form to Hojo. “What about you, then? What happens when you find your daughter? Last time we encountered her, she tried to kill us.”

“You cannot control the wind; you can only borrow it for a time.”

“A pithy saying isn’t a replacement for a solid solution, nor a strategy. You’ve asked the disciple his. What about yours?”

“I have something in mind.” Hojo finally removed the conical hat from his head, strands of his long gray hair falling over his eyes. “I believe we should rest for now. We will begin training once the sun sets, and head toward Moonagwa from there. After what we’ve done, it is best that we keep our travels to the twilight hours.”

****

As daylight extended into their cave, the thoughts racing through Arik’s mind made it difficult to sleep. When he was finally able to reach a form of reverie, he found himself on that beach again, fighting off false shinobi, growing stronger and more intense with each wave of combatants that came, hacking away as blood sprayed into the air around him.

It was a terrible way to rest.

Arik was awoken later that evening by Meosa. “Disciple.”

He stirred, and as he did he felt a watery hand slap him across the face.

“Hey!”

“Ha! Sorry about that. Just letting you know that the supposed illusionist is ready to see you now.”

“You didn’t have to wake me up like that.”

“I was just being playful. It gets boring, you know, waiting around for humans to sleep. You do realize you spend what equates to half of your lives lying motionless. I guess it isn’t all bad. I do find it amusing when humans have dreams, kicking their legs like dogs, smiling randomly, maybe speaking. You didn’t seem to rest so well, anyway.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Keep sleeping like that and you’ll be gray like the supposed illusionist.”

Once Arik was ready, he moved to the exit of the cave, where Meosa helped lower him to the ground below. He turned west, to a dry lakebed before a waterfall that had stopped flowing years ago. He found Hojo sitting there, the bags the master illusionist had been carrying off to the side.

Hojo got to his feet and placed his hand on the grip of his weapon. “If you would like something to eat, I have gathered a few things.” Hojo tilted his chin toward a few items he had laid out on a strip of leather—dried herbs, berries, and what looked like nuts from where Arik stood.

“After.”

There was no part of Arik that thought he could actually take Hojo on. They had sparred a handful of times now, mostly so that the master illusionist could teach Arik a new lesson, Hojo surprisingly fast and strong. And that was without taking his cunning and sheer experience into the equation.

Even if he grew twice as strong, Arik was certain that Hojo would easily best him.

“Kami, show yourself.”

Meosa flared up behind Arik. “You’d be wise to address me respectfully when we are in situations like this.”

“Yet again, it is time for you to practice working together. Since your two destinies are tied, it would be foolish for you not to utilize each other’s power. Draw your blade, disciple. I want you to come at me as if you were going to attack, only for the kami to strike at me instead. This is your strategy for now.”

Arik set his single bag down, the Mask of the Fallen inside. He had trained with it a few times, but he didn’t like wearing it when facing off against Hojo, that red line reminding him that if he could land a perfect strike, he would be able to kill his teacher.

It was too risky.

Once he had his weapon in his hand, Arik shot forward, initiating the attack with full intensity. There was no faking it, and he was comfortable enough around Hojo to push himself close to his limit. Arik never passed the threshold, but he knew it served him best to get as close to that point as he could, especially with what lay ahead.

It felt natural to thrust his other hand forward as he neared Hojo, Meosa surging around his arm and firing at the master illusionist as if Arik was using some kind of magical power. He felt the chi surge all around him as this happened, his own power seemingly amplified by the water spirit.

Meosa never struck Hojo; he didn’t say anything as they moved into position to try again.

This had been Hojo’s instruction over the last two days, the master illusionist having Arik and Meosa practice the same technique over and over. Hojo said he was aware that there would be variations, and that combat would create scenarios in which Arik would have to improvise. But being able to execute it perfectly in a controlled environment would benefit him the most going forward.

They transferred to another exercise that had Arik slashing at the dry lakebed as if he had a pair of watery whips. There were no names for the techniques he started to develop, no traditional phrasing running through his head as he performed them.

“Do it from a vantage point now,” Hojo instructed him, a variation of the skill known as Contesting Heights.

Arik rose several feet in the air and attempted the same maneuver, once again slashing at the ground. They worked on a variation of this which actually included sword-to-sword combat, Arik and Hojo going at it while Meosa came in from the side to sweep the master illusionist off his feet.

“Let’s stop the kami actions for the time being,” Hojo said, the master illusionist just slightly winded. This passed in a matter of moments. “I am by no means an expert on Thunderaura, but there is a technique that my teacher taught me, a technique originated by Combat Master Jurstrom Yinzo in one of his various combat treaties. No, I don’t know which one. It is similar to the very first skill you have learned to utilize alongside the kami, and using your chi aura in this way may prove difficult at first. We’ll see. The idea is to focus your power not into your hand but into your wrist. You will then transfer this to the tip of your blade. For once, you aren’t trying to strike your enemy. You are trying to strike reality itself. I will show you what this looks like. It is called the One-Count Strike.”

Hojo lowered his head, his conical hat shielding his face as it always did, letting just a bit of moonlight play out across his facial features. He brought his sword back, took a short breath, and sent it straight down, stopping at about waist height.

He let out a puff of air as he did so, and Arik noticed a small wave of force ripple around the master illusionist. He also felt a swell of electricity. Had he been closer, or had Hojo actually struck him, Arik would have certainly been grounded, if not worse.

“That’s definitely a Thunderaura technique.”

“It is, disciple. You’ve spent your entire life dedicated to Revivaura yet you have not realized, or maybe you have realized but you have not fully understood, that all of these powers are drawing from the same source. You have merely specialized in a single aspect of it. What if you are able to take that specialization and instantly cross it into a different branch? You seem to have already been able to do this to some degree, not only with your combat technique, but your understanding of Chimaura.”

“Which you continue to be mostly silent about,” Meosa said.

“Chimaura may have been something I used to teach, but is not something I feel the urge to teach now. I see what it has done to those in my past. That said, you seem to have picked some of it up on your own. And through fate, I am available to help mold it to some degree. Learning by circumstance, learning through trauma and life experience—these are the best ways, disciple.”

“How do I do that? How do I do what you just did?”

“I’ve already told you how to perform the One-Count Strike. Rather than look at your opponent as your opponent, look at reality itself as your opponent and focus your power from your wrist into the tip of your weapon. Don’t strike your opponent. Strike the very nature of being itself, strike the balance all around us. Then, and only then, will you be able to master a technique like this. Clearly, I have not mastered it. But I am close.” Hojo paused. “I’ve said too much.”

“It’s fine.”

“Let’s see you try. Let go to the point that the barrier between your physical existence, and the existence of everything else around you is blurred.”

Arik knew how instinctual it was by now to summon his healing capabilities, how it felt like water had rushed over him, and how chi translated to other technique schools, like Thunderaura, which had an electric feel to it. He didn’t quite know how to describe Chimaura, but it was smokey in an infiltrative kind of way, a different sensation altogether.

But to pull a move like this off…

How would he execute the One-Count Strike, especially as his only true experience with Thunderaura had been the limited combat he had at the Academy of Combat Arts in Mogra?

Arik gripped his sword tightly, running his eyes along its edge to the tip of the weapon.

Cut reality, he thought, trying to imagine the world around them as an enormous cloth. The disciple fell straight in position, and sent his blade forward.

Nothing.

“He’s not strong enough to learn something like this,” Meosa said, his voice loud in Arik’s ear. “No offense, disciple. This is a master-level technique, and the supposed illusionist here could barely pull it off himself.”

“Ignore him and try again.”

Arik nodded at Hojo’s suggestion and once again moved into position.

He kept his eyes open, knowing that in a true fight it would be foolish for him to shut them. Arik summoned his healing power, which flared up around him, invisible. It was something he was able to do, but since there was nothing to heal, it would quickly dissipate. He assumed this had a way of kickstarting his chi aura, which turned out to be right as he brought his sword down yet again.

He didn’t slice through reality, but he did feel something different, a resistance, a tear in time. This was followed by something else, a sinking feeling in his chest, as if he had just healed someone from a severe injury.

“What’s that?” Arik asked, the disciple slightly hunched for a moment as the feeling passed.

“There is a reason that most people spend years upon years studying one aspect of chi and disregarding others. As you become more comfortable with using one aspect, like you have with Revivaura, it grows increasingly difficult for you to fluidly use the other two.”

“What about Yokaura?”

“We aren’t there yet, disciple. You are younger, and like the War Priest before you, you should be able to truly grasp the power of more than one aspect of chi. But it will still prove troublesome, and it may leave you feeling nauseous, or depleted of your power. This is one reason I didn’t put my full ability into showing you the technique, the One-Count Strike. I feel the same exhaustion in overusing the power. But it may be something necessary, especially if you go to the extreme that you are planning to go to. Nobunaga won’t hesitate to overpower you by any means necessary. The technique may be vital to you staying alive.”

“Right,” Arik said as he sheathed his blade.

Hojo turned away from him, signaling the end of their lesson. “Come. It is best if we travel at night. It will take at least two days to reach Moonagwa.”

.Chapter Three.

“Make sure others cannot read you as you work out their minds.”

–A quote attributed to Hidden Warrior Torugan de Avarga, Year 1430.

Arik had a hard time keeping up with Hojo that night. He’d grown more accustomed to the nocturnal ways of a Hidden Warrior, but he still found himself tired once the moon hit its apex in the sky, the night in a slow drag toward an inevitable dawn.

The pair had switched their sleeping schedule twice since he had rejoined Hojo, the master illusionist seeming to have no issue in being awake for twenty-four hours, resting, keeping a new schedule for a day or two, and then returning to their original schedule, a true assault on circadian rhythms.

Even more remarkable, Hojo kept a brisk pace, as if he were feeling refreshed, somehow always finding his way to the shadows whenever possible. This seemed instinctual to him, and there were moments in their journey that Arik felt as if the man had disappeared entirely.

Arik noticed numerous times that Hojo walked in a strange way, a swaying of sorts, his feet sliding against the ground. He assumed that this was an infiltration technique, that it was so ingrained in Hojo that he barely thought of it, the man loose and limber yet still with a rigidity to him that betrayed his relaxed nature.

He wondered more than once if this had to do with sheer exhaustion, or if Hojo was once again tapping into his Chimaura power…

Arik remembered Hojo’s mention of Hidden Warrior Sickness, and he recalled some of the stranger experiences he’d had with the man, like when Hojo had asked him to purposely injure him, an almost deranged look on his face. He recalled the way the master illusionist appeared as they retrieved the Mask of the Fallen at the shaman woman’s directions, his features melting away, Hojo sobbing, teetering on the brink of insanity.

Whether real or not—and Arik was certain it was real—it was an image that he would never forget.

There were various branches of Revivaura that had been codified over the years, all disciples starting with the Faithful Branch of Common Restoration, moving to the Devout Branch of Regrowth. Later, they were allowed to choose a Divine Branch, Arik selecting Wound Transfer, something he occasionally regretted even with all of its strengths. Had he progressed to the mastery school, Arik may have been able to study the Sacred Branch of Disease Detection and Empathetic Healing, which would be a way for him to help Hojo. Because clearly, based on what Arik had seen, the master illusionist was suffering.

And there was nothing Arik could do about it.

Arik wasn’t comfortable enough with the man to actually say something about what he appeared to be going through, but he was starting to sense it more and more, especially after they had encountered his daughter, Tayaura. Would Hojo overcome his affliction? Was there a remedy for the Hidden Warrior Sickness?

As if he were listening in on Arik’s thoughts, Hojo mentioned something about his daughter once they came to the top of a bluff. Arik noticed a hint of light in the valley that followed, the markings of a quaint settlement beyond.

“She always seems to be a day ahead…” The master illusionist didn’t need to explain who he was talking about, Arik nodding instinctively.

“What did Kogu’s paperwork say exactly? You were never clear on it.”

“As before, it was mostly invoices and shipment dates, the most pertinent pages already taken by my daughter.”

“You said she marked some of them.”

“She did. Clearly toying with whoever recognizes the markings.”

“What about the shipment?”

“Weapons. It seems as if Kogu is helping the southern warlord through weapon drops. When he eventually does move through the Jade Realm to your home, they will be able to swiftly transfer siege weapons and the like along the way, as well as rations for the soldiers, all funneled through a single location. It is a sound strategy, and it will allow Nobunaga to seem as if he’s moving at a superhuman pace once he reaches the Onyx border.”

“Do you know where the shipments will be delivered? Did she leave that information?”

“She did. Outside of Iga. Do you remember the ruins that we visited, where I taught you how to use a grappling hook? Not far from that location, there’s a place known as the Valleys of the Unknown, a very obscured portion of the Jade Realm with its numerous canyons, all shrouded in mist. It would make sense. The easiest path would be straight through this realm, Omoto on the border, north to Iga, obscured by the valleys, and once they’re out, straight to your most famous border city.”

“Austere. You don’t think they would take Austere directly?”

“They could, or they could bypass it completely and transition east to the Ezochi.”

“The capital.”

“Exactly. With the kind of siege weapons they are transporting, it looks like they are trying to take a place that is heavily fortified. This wouldn’t describe Austere, at least from the couple of times I visited. Ezochi, as I’m sure you can attest to, is the exact opposite. Those cliffside castles would be hard to penetrate without a naval army, which Nobunaga doesn’t have. At least to my knowledge.”

“So…” He felt foolish even suggesting it, but Arik liked the idea of visiting Iga again, where they held warrior pilgrimages. If they could somehow thwart Nobunaga’s eventual supply chain, it would make it harder for the southern warlord to invade his country.

“Yes?”

“We get the Whispering Sword, and then we visit Iga and destroy this supply chain.”

Hojo stopped walking and turned to Arik. “You do realize that to secure a shipment of this size would take an army of mercenaries or blades, especially as the siege weapons will need to be hidden from the Jadean government, at least those not in Kogu’s pockets. There could be thousands of men. To destroy the shipment would require…” Hojo tilted his head up, a crooked smile forming on his face. “It certainly would be a lesson in infiltration, wouldn’t it?”

“I will do whatever it takes to stop Nobunaga,” Arik said with true conviction in his voice.

“The two of you and me versus an entire army?” Meosa started to laugh, startling Arik to some degree as he had been silent for a spell. “I suppose there have been worse odds. I don’t know when this would have been the case, but it’s not like any of them will kill me anyway. So, I suppose I agree. Let’s do it, after we’ve tried to find Coro Pache’s old weapon, of course.”

Hojo considered this. “Yes, I believe it would be something that could not only disturb Nobunaga’s operation, but perhaps lead me closer to Tayaura. If she hasn’t already visited the location by the time we arrive.”

“Would she try to fight us again?” Arik asked.

“I can’t be certain. You see that light below?” Hojo motioned toward the glimmer Arik had noticed just a few moments ago. “That is a roadside inn we can stay at for the day. It will be good for us to get some rest before we continue on our journey toward Moonagwa to visit an itako there. I’ve stayed at the inn before. It is comfortable enough.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Neither do I.”

Meosa laughed at this statement. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to stop us from staying there, is it?”

“No, kami, it isn’t. But be prepared to help out.”

“Like some sort of barmaid? Remember who you are talking to, shinobi. I am no manservant.”

Hojo started walking again. “Trust me, I haven’t forgotten.”

****

It all happened with a wave of his hand.

They were given a room as soon as they reached the roadside inn, Hojo barely saying a word to the man who ran the place with his wife and children. Arik did notice a sense of familiarity between Hojo and the owner, but there was also this feeling that everything around him was being obscured, a fog of sorts that he didn’t quite recognize, one that lifted once they reached the room that Hojo hadn’t quite paid for.

“Alas, I wonder how many supposed illusionists like yourself have scammed places like this through the ages,” Meosa told Hojo as Arik placed his bag at the foot of the bed in the corner.

“There was no scam.”

“Then pay them.”

“I don’t have any sen at the moment. Do either of you have any? Or rupees or oban? No? I thought not. We have other ways that we will help this family. Besides, the room was vacant overnight, and we will leave in the evening. They can still use it.”

“What other ways do we have to help them?” Arik asked.

“I want you to go downstairs, disciple, and see if they give you a task. I have a feeling they will. Once you are finished, you can rejoin me up here.”

Arik nodded.

“So you get to rest while he works, is that how you plan to do it, eh?”

“I will help them out when I wake before the two of you.”

“I don’t ever sleep,” Meosa reminded Hojo.

“Then you can join me, if you’d like. Before you leave, I have something for you to think about while you perform whatever task they ask of you, disciple. The last time we trained, I showed you the One-Count Strike, and spoke to you about how all the interpretations of chi are merely that, interpretations. There is a story we tell at the School of Illusion once we revisit the mastering disguises and deception lessons, one that may help you in your journey.”

Arik nodded, recalling the trials and tribulations of that portion of his initial training from Hojo. He vividly remembered what it had been like to be in Avarga and disguise himself, Meosa generally helping by throwing his voice. It made sense that more advanced students would come back to the basic lessons, especially after they had learned how to utilize Chimaura.

“I suppose I should frame it like this, which will help you think about it in a different light: If you can accomplish the One-Count Strike, it will show me that you have advanced past the point of specializing in chi, not quite becoming a generalist, but becoming someone who can utilize more advanced methods. I’ve thought about it, and we are in a situation where I’m going to try to teach you these things rapidly. Do note that it takes a typical illusionist years before they are even told that this is a possibility.”

“Thank you,” Arik said, not quite sure of where Hojo was going.

The master illusionist removed his conical hat and placed it on the bed next to him. “As for the story I have, it took place years ago, and it involves two brothers. Sandan ran a lumber mill outside of Avarga, while his brother, Johmar de Avarga, went on to become a master illusionist. The two brothers were close, and once the Jade-Crimson War of Shadows started, they knew they were to be separated.”

“That long ago?” Meosa asked. “Nearly a thousand years…”

“Johmar sent a message to his brother at the lumber mill that he would be going to the front to work as a spy. In this message, he promised to meet his brother Sandan after the war at a friend’s home they had once stayed in during their youth. The war ended after a little over a year, and Sandan went to the place where he would meet his brother. He saw Johmar and embraced him. The two spent the rest of the day walking along the shores of a lake, fishing, and catching up on the past. As they had done as children, the two laid out blankets on the shore and went to sleep.”

“A brotherly union. What is the meaning of this parable?”

“It isn’t a parable, kami.” Hojo smoothed his hands over his robes and rolled up the cuffs. He finally looked up at the disciple, something shining behind his eyes. “Johmar died eight months before meeting his brother, during the war, yet they still were able to enjoy the afternoon together. I want you to think about this before we go any further. How is it possible? How did Johmar de Avarga do it? What powers lie beyond the traditional understandings of chi? Think about this.”

It became clear as Hojo sat there that he wasn’t going to say anything else. Arik eventually shifted to the door and from there, to the family below.

He left his weapon behind as well as the Mask of the Fallen, the disciple feeling a relief of sorts in being away from the seemingly cursed object. It didn’t affect him too terribly, but he did notice its absence once he reached the floor below.

A teenage girl spotted Arik and motioned for him to follow her. The brunette daughter of the innkeeper handed him a broom and led him around, having him sweep certain places almost as if she were in a trance.

There was a storage room on the western side of the building, one covered in cobwebs. Arik cleaned these out, and in doing so he managed to dislodge a sharp stone, which fell and struck the teenage girl on her foot. Had she been wearing boots, she likely would have been okay, but she was wearing sandals.

The stone instantly drew blood.

“Let me help.” The disciple crouched before her foot.

Even as Meosa started to protest, Arik summoned his power, feeling it twist all around him. The wound was healed in an instant, the bruise that was forming no longer there. The only proof that it had even happened was a bit of smeared blood due to the fact that the stone had hit a vein.

“How did you do that?” the teenager asked, wide eyed now as she stared at Arik.

“You shouldn’t meddle, my boy.”

Once again, he ignored Meosa as he got back to his feet and retrieved the broom. “Where else would you like me to sweep?”

Clearly a little spooked, the teenager bit her lip and she finally offered Arik a short nod. “The kitchen, and the floor could use scrubbing as well.”

“I’ve got just the thing for that,” Arik said.

Meosa laughed bitterly at the disciple. “If you think I’m going to help you clean the floor of some peasant inn, you may as well jump off the tallest peak in Iga!”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to help,” Arik said under his breath as the teenager led him to the kitchen. “Just do so discreetly.”

****

Arik fell asleep relatively quickly after helping the family that ran the inn.

He awoke early the next evening to find Hojo standing over him, a curious look on his face.

“Yes?” Arik asked as he moved away from the master illusionist. He wasn’t afraid of Hojo, especially with Meosa protecting them, but he didn’t like the master illusionist’s demeanor, a darkness to the man’s face that he wasn’t expecting.

“Did you heal someone downstairs?”

“One of the daughters, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because she was bleeding.”

“You cannot give yourself away, disciple.”

“That’s exactly what I told him,” Meosa said, the aqueous kami coming alive. He now floated next to Hojo in his vaporous form, two limbs akin to his arms crossed over his chest. “For once, we’re on the same page, illusionist.”

“You’ve put this family in a difficult situation.”

“How?” Arik asked, challenging Hojo’s accusation. “She was injured, and I helped her. I know that I had to be careful about my power before, but it’s not something I plan to do anymore. I’ve seen Nobunaga now, I know what I’m up against, and—”

“Enough,” Hojo said as he stepped to the door. “Grab your things, and follow me. We’re leaving.”

Arik pulled his hair back once Hojo had exited the room, the disciple assuming that he would wait for him in the hallway. “Is he serious?”

“He was already packing up earlier, while you were sleeping. I would float out there and see what he’s planning, but he is merely standing in the hallway. Not much to see. And he is right, you know. You should be careful about your power.”

“We cannot live in fear.”

“It is nothing about living in fear, disciple, and you know that. It is about staying alive long enough to extract revenge. You have seen Nobunaga. I’ll ask you to remember who he was with, aside from his guards, all of whom are highly trained in using Thunderaura. Enenra is a powerful kami, and she’s protecting him as well. Even if you do manage to reach Nobunaga, you have to go through her. Of course, I will help you, but she has bested me before…”

“What’s your point?”

“My point?” Meosa huffed. “My point is, to get to that stage, the stage in which you plan to enact your revenge, you need to keep it together and stay hidden, that’s my point! Going around healing peasant girls in a country without healers isn’t a way to stay hidden, disciple. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you!”

Arik didn’t say anything else as he gathered his things, the Mask of the Fallen going in the inner pocket of his robes, now close to his chest, the bag over his shoulder containing his shinobi tools and the Coro Pache book.

He entered the hallway to find Hojo waiting for him, his face concealed as always. The master illusionist quietly led him downstairs, Arik surprised to find the family all seated at the table, an enchanted look on each of their faces. “What… what’s wrong with them?”

“You are curious about the power of Chimaura, are you not? Watch.” His conical hat now over his head, Hojo approached the family and slowly placed a single hand on the table. All of them did the same.

Keeping his head bowed, Hojo seemed to stop breathing, his body slowly sinking forward, Arik not understanding what he was seeing.

Finally, after what felt like a minute, Hojo took a short breath.

Transitioning around him, Arik finally got a glimpse of the master illusionist’s face, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, completely white now, his nostrils flared wide, his lips slightly parted.

“Stop toying with them.” Meosa’s voice broke Arik’s concentration, but it didn’t break Hojo’s, who was still focused on the family.

It was then that Arik realized he had been looking at the wrong thing.

While he had been focused on Hojo, he hadn’t paid any attention to the family of four, all of whom wore similar looks on their faces now, their eyes rolled back, their nostrils flared, lips slightly parted. It was very subtle, but as he looked back to Hojo, he noticed a smoke-like substance wafting from his mouth, connecting him to each of the family members.

This is Chimaura, Arik thought, secretly proud of himself for finally being able to recognize it.

They remained like this as Hojo stepped away from them and grabbed the single bag he was carrying, which had already been set near the door.

“Bloody show-off,” said Meosa once the master illusionist had departed.

Arik was just about to follow him when he turned back to the family and noticed the look on the teenage girl’s face, the one whom he had healed last night. Her pupils were now visible, yet she still sat in stunned silence, transfixed on some point in the distance even though she was in the confines of a small, candlelit room.

It was entirely bizarre.

****

Arik joined Hojo outside, where he found the master illusionist now standing near a wheelbarrow of hay, his face shielded by the truncated shadow from his conical hat.

“What will happen to them?”

“They will be fine. In a few minutes they will all come out of their trance, and they will forget that we were ever there.”

Hojo turned north and began walking, Arik quickly catching up with him.

“I don’t see why that was necessary,” Arik said, even though there was a part of him that understood why Hojo had done what he had done. This statement was mostly said just to tease out a better explanation of Chimaura, its effects, and how to utilize it.

“It took you years to understand Revivaura, even if you were healing at a young age, with your natural inclination and all.” Hojo was referring to the way they tested children in the north, to see if they could even manage Revivaura to begin with. “Chimaura, while it is still using chi, is different. The School of Illusion codified a way to train anyone to utilize the power. Many of my students had no natural talent whatsoever, yet they were able to cultivate their abilities through knowledge and intense practice. It is something that requires not only concentration, but repetition. You aren’t going to have to do this as much considering you already understand how to use chi.”

“It’s a corrupted magick,” Meosa said, “nothing more. Chimaura doesn’t utilize chi the same way that Thunderaura and Revivaura do, not to mention Yokaura.”

“The kami isn’t wrong. The things taught for the majority of time at the School of Illusion are merely auxiliary arts. Understanding the ways of the world and how to use it without relying on one’s power is one of the most important lessons. Chimaura is, for our purpose, a chi to be utilized sparingly once other options have been exhausted. Remember, a well-trained Hidden Warrior looks like a stupid man.”

“Yes, I believe you’ve said something like that before.”

“And I will keep saying it, disciple. By the time someone in a northern or southern school is utilizing Thunderaura or Revivaura, those at my school are still studying the basics of deception. When you are learning to practically bring someone back from the dead, someone with the goal of becoming a shinobi is studying espionage and infiltration. As you figure out how to grow a new arm after one has been severed, those at my school are just becoming more familiar with using a sword. When you are graduating to the advanced schools, a shinobi is just starting to learn about Chimaura. Do you see what I’m saying here? What is most important is understanding what you can do without Chimaura.”

“Then why do you keep showing it to me?”

“I keep showing it to you because you have reached the point that it is going to be necessary to utilize it in what you plan to do, regardless of your readiness. Not only that, there are others out there who have mastery over these powers, and you need to be able to recognize and understand them.”

Arik lowered his head. Hojo wasn’t speaking to him in a harsh way, yet he couldn’t help but feel like he was being reprimanded by a teacher.

“Sengum Minamoto was an instructor at the School of Illusion, one who betrayed our code. A friend, dare I say a shadow-brother. I’ve been trying to locate him as well as my daughter, but now my focus has shifted toward Tayaura, because she is still young enough to make mistakes. Kogu, the businessman we are tracking through his weapon sales, is the go-between between Nobunaga and Sengum. And as you know, Sengum is the one training and hiring out these false shinobi. He is a master at Chimaura, and he is linked to Nobunaga. Doubly dangerous. Do you see why I’m showing you what I’m showing you? For all you know, you’ve already encountered Sengum.”

“I… I see.” They started to shift away from the road, Hojo once again walking in a way that left no marks, no indication of which way he was going.

“You are right in thinking that there was no harm in healing that girl back at the roadside inn, but a feat like that has a way of getting around. Sengum and Kogu have spies and informants everywhere, which is something we will discuss soon. It would have put that family at great risk once the news of what you did reached one of these informants.”

“Really?”

“They would have likely been tortured for information about us, and while I was planning to address their memories once we were on our way out, this information could have spread while we were sleeping. It didn’t, but it could have. I know that you, of all people, don’t want that family to die, nor do I. But that isn’t the only thing that could have come about had you been discovered. Nobunaga has contacts all over the Jade Realm. There could have been a manhunt. You must think about these things, disciple.”

“I… I understand.”

“Not only is it a matter of life and death for you, what you do is a matter of life and death for others as well. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t help those around you, but you must be hypervigilant about doing it. Because one day, one day soon, word will get out that you exist, and the rumors will start up that the War Priest may be back. It is my goal to get you to this day.”

“Why?”

“Why…” Hojo tilted his head back. An arc of moonlight tracing across his face revealed a wry a grin. “Because I have no other choice in the matter.”

.Chapter Four.

“As the day breaks on the shores of Katano, I think of a ship moving through the morning mist, skeletons in its hull.”

–A quote carved into a wooly kayno bone by Hidden Warrior Hirata Masuhiro de Iga of the School of Illusion, and later published in a collection of his carvings, Hirata in Stone, First Edition, Yoshimura Books, Year 1019.

Silence was to be expected in their journey to Moonagwa, Arik’s thoughts occasionally drifting to some of the things that had happened to him since the Academy of Healing Arts was destroyed, his way of life forever fractured.

He wondered how far away they were from where he had made his escape from Jinmo, which led to Arik freeing Meosa from a cave and heading south from there, a journey stained in circumstance. It was somewhere within this region, he could almost sense it, yet this barren setting, one of deep crevices, branchless pines, and darkened stumps, seemed almost alien to the landscape he had once traveled through, which was one filled with yokai and wildlife.

Something had happened here.

After a little more walking, the disciple was surprised to see what looked like a pair of lanterns about half a mile away.

“Should we stay back?” he asked. They had been walking for eight hours now, the sun soon to rise, Arik assuming that Hojo would want to rest for the day as they had grown accustomed to doing.

“They have stopped,” said Hojo.

“They can’t possibly see us from there.”

Meosa spoke: “The disciple is right. Unless they have a kami working for them, the two of you are practically a pair of shadows out here in the middle of nowhere, lurking around like gaki-brained wraiths.”

“Let’s move a bit closer and see who they are. Be prepared for anything.”

Hojo took the lead, Arik following behind him. It dawned on him as they grew closer why he suddenly felt so paranoid. Being alone for so long in a near-featureless landscape surrounded by batholith had produced an empty feeling within him. Seeing other humans reminded Arik that he was still very much alive.

****

There were more people than Arik had anticipated. As they approached, he counted six in total, the men bearing the clothing and insignias of the Jade Realm. They looked official, yet he instantly felt that something was off about the entire operation.

Hojo stopped about fifteen feet away from them. “Well, disciple?”

“Yes?” Arik asked after a long pause.

“Why would foot soldiers of the Jadean government be patrolling this early in the morning? There are no known threats here. Look at them again.”

Arik glanced at the men a second time, noticing now that the uniforms were ill-fitted, their robes oversized, and the threading that tied their boots to their calves loose. These aren’t soldiers, Arik thought, the words coming to him before he could fully process what this meant. If they aren’t soldiers, then who are they?

There was a chance that they were bandits, but the false shinobi were quite active now in the Jade Realm, and he didn’t know if they would be bold enough to put themselves on a main road.

There was also a chance that they were from the Crimson Realm, that this was some sort of false flag. But from what Arik and Hojo had already uncovered, there seemed to be some cooperation between Nobunaga and Jadean authorities, at least those in the pocket of the iniquitous businessman, Kogu.

“Put your mask on, disciple. Do so discreetly. Remain behind me until it is fully on.”

Hojo drew his sword and stepped forward.

“We’re doing this?” Meosa asked. “Because I’ve been wanting to test out some of the techniques that we have been working on, and I’m not talking about smothering humans with giant waves. I want to throw some watery fists in as well.”

Rather than answer, Arik shifted his hand to the inner pocket of his front robes and retrieved the Mask of the Fallen. He placed it on his face and slowly tied it behind his head, its purple thread hanging down his back. Wearing the mask gave him an instant confidence, the piece warm, Arik hearing a faint voice somewhere at the back of his head.

Hojo stepped forward and drew his sword, putting himself directly in the path of the men. For a split moment, he’d startled them, but this soon passed.

“Keep moving, hermit,” said one of the largest soldiers, a brute of a man easily two feet taller than Arik. “You don’t stand a chance.” The man had forearms the size of logs, his waist the width of the school desk. When Hojo didn’t budge, the man grunted and drew a great sword.

Arik barely caught Hojo’s next action.

The master illusionist was suddenly standing directly beside the man, his head bowed, blood dripping off the tip of the sword, the air electric. The big man dropped to his knees, gasping, blood starting to bloom from the front of his stolen Jadean robes.

He fell face first in the dirt.

Can he secretly use Thunderaura? Arik thought, shocked at the sheer speed of Hojo’s movement.

He wasn’t the only one shocked by his action.

The five soldiers still standing all took steps back even as they drew their weapons.

“Now is as good of a time as any, disciple…”

Arik burst forward, his speed augmented by Meosa, water swirling around him as he charged past Hojo and reached one of the men.

Attacking initiative…

First form…

Autumn Leaves Strike.

These words ran across Arik’s mind as he moved to the offensive. The disciple cleaved his opponent’s sword out of his hand.

“What the—?” his assailant managed to say just as he was struck by a fist made of water. A watery hand latched around his face and dragged him behind Arik as he moved to address his next opponent.

Klank!

Their blades met, Arik feeling the vibration deep within the grip of his weapon.

The Mask of the Fallen made its presence known, a red line appearing and tied directly to his opponent’s stomach. This required Arik to place both hands on the grip of his sword as he thrust it forward, the disciple trusting the mask completely, grotesquely rewarded by a spray of blood as his sword pressed out of his assailant’s back.

A stray arm flew his way, Arik momentarily thrown off guard as Hojo continued his offensive. The man who just lost his arm fell to his knees screaming; Arik saw a flash of white and registered it as bone.

He swallowed the urge to do anything to help.

A wave of power returned to him as Meosa finished drowning Arik’s first opponent, the aqueous kami moving as if he were an extension of Arik’s own limb and whipping forward. The trail of water struck one of the final assailants and grounded him immediately, the Mask of the Fallen instantly showing Arik the kill strike.

Once again, he gave into the mask.

Arik slid to his knees as he came forward and drove his sword through the bottom of the man’s chin, and out the back of his head, a move he would have never attempted, one he didn’t even think was possible.

But the mask did.

He stood, feeling savage and brutish as he slowly withdrew his sword from the man’s head, his chest heaving, Arik also feeling shocked at how quickly it was all over. He wiped his blade on his assailant’s robes and turned to Hojo, who was now crouched before the false guard, now missing an arm.

“It’s time to find out more.” Hojo tilted his head slightly, his face covered in shadow with just an arc of light showing that he was smiling.

Arik took a step forward, a force stopping him from advancing. For a brief moment, he thought that it had something to do with the mask, but then he realized it was Meosa.

“You might want to stand back for this, disciple.”

“Stand back for what?” Arik instinctively removed the mask, and returned it to its pocket, a breath of fresh, blood-misted air coming to him.

“The interrogation. I don’t know how cruel he will be, but that is why Hojo kept him alive. What was that back there? That sliding maneuver? Did you plan that?”

Arik shook his head.

“Then what was it?”

He turned away just as the man cried out behind him. Arik bit his lip as he looked up at the sky, which now had a bronze haze to it, a dark, aquamarine hue. “It was the mask.”

****

Even if they were false shinobi disguised as soldiers, Hojo insisted that they receive proper enough burials. Caravans and other traveling groups used this particular path; Hojo didn’t want them to come across a series of dead bodies, who by that point would be bloated, half-picked apart by animals, or infested with insects.

With this in mind, the disciple and the master illusionist began moving the bodies to the other side of the hill, where they let them slide down into an open area that was hidden from the main thoroughfare. Throughout this entire time, Hojo never said anything about the information he had eased out of their final assailant.

Dragging bodies after traveling all night didn’t mix well with an adrenaline cooldown, even with his enhanced healing capabilities. Arik was feeling haggard now, and as they finished, Hojo prepping to light the bodies on fire, Arik finally had a moment to relive what happened during the fight.

Normally he was very controlling about the way he went about combat, which he knew was something that could be to his detriment. In giving into the Mask of the Fallen, he had moved like someone who had studied Thunderaura for years.

It was both exhilarating and frightening.

As the flames licked the air, and Meosa dampened a few pockets of grass around the area where the men were burning, Arik decided to continue to trust the mask, even if this went against his better judgment.

Being able to move like that would be to his advantage.

They soon set off toward Moonagwa, Hojo letting Arik know that there was a cabin that they could stay in, one that was within the network of safe houses that Hidden Warriors of the past had set up around the Jade Realm. “It won’t be long now,” the master illusionist assured him. “Also, I saw what you did back there.”

Arik started to tense up, but then he relaxed. It was nothing to be ashamed of even if a small part of him felt like it was.

“It was the mask, was it not?”

“How did you know?”

Arik’s question elicited a laugh from Meosa. “How could he not know? You are generally way more rigid than that, not that I should have to tell you. Remember, my boy, I’m attached to you in certain ways. I could feel the mask too, if that makes any sense.”

Hojo continued. “It was impressive, but you should be careful, and you should always be aware of who is in charge.”

“What did the man back there tell you?” Arik asked, wanting to change the subject.

“Mostly what I wanted to know. He confirmed that they were indeed false shinobi, recruited out of Moonagwa by one of Sengum’s lieutenants. They have taken a manor there in Moonagwa, which they were using to ship explosives.”

“Do we need to visit the manor?”

“I don’t think so. Moonagwa is a very different type of village, disciple. Outsiders are not welcomed there, so we’re going to have to blend in, and even in doing so we will still be considered outsiders. This will paint the target on our backs. People that visit Moonagwa generally stay outside the village, and over time, it has created a subdistrict of traders and other lesser aspects of civilization around the outer walls. It would be a good place for us to look around. But first, we rest. After all, the things we are searching for will best be sniffed out at night. Finally, if you are wondering what I did to that man back there, and why he was screaming, it wasn’t because of torture. I know the kami told you to look away. But I didn’t physically do anything to them.”

Meosa spoke. “He did something to his mind using Chimaura; I’ve seen it before. It might not be torture, but it isn’t far off.”

“Chimaura is a strange power, disciple, one that you should be wary of.” Hojo’s voice thinned. “One that we should all be wary of.”

****

According to Hojo, the Hidden Warrior cabin was a mile away from the outskirts of Moonagwa, tucked into a pocket of forest that was surrounded by a small stone wall built several millennia ago. Like the one that they had stayed at outside of Avarga, the safe house had a thatched roof with portions of it held down by gray rocks. Hojo once again produced the strange universal key to open the door.

It was a bit dusty inside, the shutters closed on the windows. For a moment, Arik thought about opening them, but they did prevent most of the light from entering the room, and he was tired so he decided against this in the end. After he set his things down, he approached one of the beds tucked in the corner and sat.

Meanwhile, Hojo busied himself at a cupboard on the opposite side of the room.

“As I suspected, rats have gotten to the food.” The master illusionist removed his conical hat and placed it on a table covered in dust. “When I was younger, these places were kept up. You could always find one, and several of the larger cities in the Jade Realm have more than one of these safe houses. Not only that, there are others scattered across the Crimson and Onyx Realms. But now…” He sighed. “Yet another thing that comes with the disbandment of a school.”

This comment brought a wave of sadness to Arik. What would become of the Academy of Healing Arts and all the knowledge it once held? Would it truly go the same route as the School of Illusion? It was brief, but in that moment he had a flash of watching it burn to the ground as he was being led away, unable to stop the false shinobi’s attack.

“We will have to go without food for tonight, disciple. Or today.” Hojo peered at the crack in the door, a bar of light entering the space. “On second thought, I suppose we’ve a long way to go before the sunset. Perhaps I can procure something around the area. The Hidden Warrior that set up the safe houses also made sure to put them in areas with edible vegetation in the vicinity. At least some of them. Considering the time of year…”

“I can help.”

“Yes, you can. Cover yourself with your haori cape. We may get closer to civilization than we would like in gathering things. Also, once we are outside, see if you can’t locate a pail. We could do with some water. There was a well out back. There should be a pail around.”

“I have plenty of water,” Meosa said, “but I’m not in the mood to share, and I’m guessing you don’t want to drink from the essence of a kami.”

Hojo never replied to the statement.

Soon, Arik was standing outside with the master illusionist, his haori cape draped over his head, the disciple’s hunch to some degree mirroring his teacher. Yet again, Hojo had gone from a spry middle-aged man to something that more resembled a beggar, his shoulders hunched, one lower than the other as if that arm didn’t work well any longer. After locating a pail, Arik dumped the dirt and worms out of it and caught up with the master illusionist. They moved deeper into the underbrush, the two coming to the stone wall along the perimeter of the property.

“What do you know about spies?” asked Hojo.

“What do you mean?”

“We may or may not have to utilize them in our journey going forward, but this can be a time-consuming thing. So I’m asking, disciple, what you know about the various kinds of spies, if anything.”

“A spy is a spy,” Meosa said with a grumble as the pair came to a dirt road.

Arik sensed the activity of humans around them, even though he couldn’t yet see someone. It was remarkable how hidden in plain sight the safe house was.

Hojo continued: “There are five kinds of spies that you may utilize in your employ depending on what the situation calls for. I will go over each of them individually, but the five types are local spies, inward spies, converted spies, doomed spies, and surviving spies.”

Hojo came to a bush and crouched down before it. He began stripping it of its bark and depositing it in a leather pouch he had found inside the safe house. Arik didn’t remember seeing him procure the pouch, but there was no way he had been carrying it with him the entire journey from Omoto.

“Five types of spies, huh?” Meosa laughed bitterly. “Should I be taking notes?”

“For our sake, local spies would be the type we would employ if it were something we needed. There are various ways to pay them. For the more advanced, we’d use Chimaura. I’ve also traded textiles for information before and depending on where you are in the realm, there may be other items of interest that hold value.”

“That makes sense, local spies,” Arik said. They stepped onto another dirt road, where he spotted a true Jadean guard, the man in crisp robes and holding a spear tightly, his eyes covered by the shade of his helmet.

“There used to be berries around here,” Hojo told the soldier in a voice that was no longer his, that of a cackling old man. “Do you know where they are, son?”

“Do I look like the town gardener?”

Hojo looked up at the soldier, confusion tracing across his face. “I swear they used to be around here.”

“Then find them. It is not my job to help you steal berries, beggar.” The soldier huffed past Hojo, taking a few steps away from them to signify that their conversation was done.

Arik saw in that moment what the master illusionist had been planning. Along the roadside, resting against a crate, was a leather sack with food in it that belonged to the soldier.

Soon, Hojo had the bag and was slipping away from the guard, dragging his foot in the process as Arik caught up with him. “I found the berries.”

“You think you’re so sly…” Meosa said once they had disappeared into the woods yet again.

“I really was looking for the berries, but this will be better.” Hojo dipped his hand into the leather bag and found several slabs of meat wrapped in tamara leaf. The meat was fresh, which Arik took to mean that the soldier planned to bring it home with him later to cook. “But we still need berries… this way, disciple. We’ll find them on our way back. Where were we?”

“Spies.”

“Yes, spies. Local spy was the first I told you about, yes?”

Arik nodded.

“The next kind of spy is called an inward spy, which is the practice of converting an official into a spy. We distinguish these from local spies because a local one can be anyone that isn’t an official, from a town drunk to a passing merchant. Inward spies are generally ones that require some conversion, cultivation, and they always hold a higher rank than a local spy. Once again, nothing is off the table when it comes to how you convince them to provide information.”

Arik heard the soldier yell out somewhere in the distance, but by this point, he would never find them.

“Local spies, inward spies, and that brings us to our next classification, converted spies. A converted spy is the term for getting hold of an enemy spy and using them for our own purposes through either threats or some other kind of coercion. Perhaps they were providing information on you and your camp. Now that you have caught them, you extract information from them. And then do what you must to get rid of the spy, or hold them for other purposes.”

“There is nothing converted about that,” Meosa said as they circled down a stone pathway into a grotto. “I don’t know why you would classify them as such, but the School of Illusion rarely makes sense in its lessons.”

“Harsh, but perhaps true. The next kind of spy is what is known as a doomed spy. These are the ones meant to be captured.”

“Meant to be captured?” Arik asked, fascinated by the conversation. To think that the School of Illusion had put so much thought into defining spies only told Arik the extent of what they were able to do.

“Yes, doing certain things openly for the purpose of deception. An example—send this spy as a courier with information meant to throw an opposing force onto the wrong path. That’s one way of using a doomed spy, but there are more clever ways as well.” They came to the berries that Hojo was looking for, delight filling the master illusionist’s eyes. “Collect as many as you can in the pail.”

“What about water?”

“We will wash them in the river that’s nearby.”

“There’s a river?” Arik asked.

“A stream, yes, behind the safe house.”

He began collecting berries as Hojo carried on with his explanation: “A more devious way to use a doomed spy would be doing something like speaking falsely in front of a high-level prisoner, making them think as if they have overheard information. Then something happens, there’s a defection that is prearranged, and somehow this prisoner is released. Where do they go? They go straight back to the enemy with false information.”

“Information that you planted just to throw the enemy off,” Meosa added, the kami growing interested in the conversation. “That is actually quite genius.”

“A final way to use a doomed spy would be if you actually knew that there was an informant in your midst. You would then change the information that they are receiving to throw off the enemy.”

“Makes sense,” Arik said as he continued to collect berries, their juice staining his fingers with an orange color. He could smell them now, a sour hint to the berries, and he wondered how Hojo would use them in the end. They didn’t seem edible.

“Local spy, inward spy, converted spy, doomed spy, and we get to our final kind of spy, a surviving spy. These are the spies who are able to bring back news from enemies and do so reliably, what a true Hidden Warrior becomes the longer they live, or at the very least, until they become a dead spy.”

“So, there are six then,” Meosa said.

Hojo tilted his chin up, the haori cape covering his face allowing more light to pass across the bottom of his chin, revealing a smile. “I suppose you are right, kami. I wonder why we never taught it that way. Perhaps it had to do with superstition. Better to be surviving than be considered dead, something like that.” He turned his focus back to the berries. “Let’s collect more, get some water and wash them, and I will get a roast going. It can cook while we rest. In the morning, or I suppose I should say later tonight, we’ll figure out our next step.”

.Chapter Five.

“Light enters as the wound heals, never to be forgotten.”

–Master Nongrat Eldegai in his book A Healing Mind, Third Edition, Ezochi Revivaura Books, Year 1336, Page 106.

The smell of food stirred Arik’s senses, the disciple coming awake. All he could remember from his slumber was a holiday gathering, one in which he had taken his sister, Mori Ehara, to one of the many beaches of Sunocea. She had been eight years old at the time, which would have made it four years ago.

Arik and Mori were never that close considering the time that he had spent at the Academy, but he cared for her, and he owed it to his mother and father to make sure that Mori survived all this.

The disciple hadn’t given much thought to what he would do if he was able to rescue her. Would he simply return to his home, the Onyx Realm? They had other relatives in Sunocea; maybe they would be able to look after her. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that they barely knew each other, Mori only seeing him during the summers when he wasn’t interning at clinics, or taking part in extracurricular activities.

“Look who decides to wake up.”

Meosa was in his water form not far away from Arik, pretending as if he were seated at the end of the bed. He glanced over to the disciple, his features obscured by the watery nature of his face.

“Yes?” Arik asked.

“The master illusionist is outside. He said to check and make sure you have all your shinobi tools, eat some of the roast, and join him.”

“Right.” Arik immediately went to the task of looking through his items, even if he was still a little groggy from just waking. He had his sanjaku cloth; stone pencil; the grappling hook; his makeup set (usuumi gray ink, a shade of vermilion red known as shu, and white face powder called oshiroi); fire starter; haori cape; compact mirror; and finally a pair of kunai daggers and a set of caltrops.

“See? I told him it was all there. I would have gone through it myself but I thought, why bother? You would be up at some point.”

Arik didn’t say anything as he approached the pot on an iron stove, the glow of embers slowly fading away giving it the aspects of the hearth. He had never tasted food like this before, the meat tender and soft, yet with a bittersweet flavor to it that had a peppery finish from the berries they had gathered. The roast was good, filling, the disciple going back for a second helping when the door of the safe house opened.

Hojo stepped in as if he were an afterthought, no sound to his movement aside from the creak of the door.

“I tried to wake him earlier but he just looks so peaceful sleeping.”

“It’s fine, kami. There has been a development.”

“A development?”

“Members of the royal family are in Moonagwa for a fertility ritual. This means that the city itself is going to be even more guarded than I anticipated. It will be harder for us to reach the woman I’m hoping to see.”

“The one that you think can help me find the Whispering Sword, right?”

There was a reason that Arik had asked this question.

In the past, he entrusted Hojo and had been deceived. Even if the mysterious man was his guide in the Jade Realm, Arik knew that he would always have an ulterior motive, that their goals more or less aligned for now. If they changed, Hojo could just as easily disappear into the night. He didn’t want to believe this about him, but the more he came to understand what was taught at the School of Illusion, the more distrustful he became.

It was best to be on guard and ask questions.

“That is correct. The ritual she performs will complete the text, allowing us to decipher the cryptic message and find the sword.”

Meosa groaned. “Another itako? I thought we had enough with the last shaman that we met.”

“The School of Illusion uses various ways to uncover information. Itako are one of those ways.”

“Superstition, all of it.”

“Yet you see that the disciple now possesses the Mask of the Fallen, which he seemingly plucked out of thin air.”

“Bah, I suppose you are right. So, Moonagwa was heavily guarded. What are you suggesting?” Meosa asked, pushing the conversation along.

“We are going to have to rely on our ability to form disguises to get into the city. I’ve been thinking about ones that we could use. There are always beggars, and we could potentially disguise ourselves as extended cousins of the nobility, but this would require different clothing. There are textile merchants outside of the city, so this is a possibility. We could also wait it out, but this may cause issues for us later down the line as we tried to disrupt Nobunaga’s supply chain. Not to mention Tayaura.”

“Did you… did you see any signs of her?”

Hojo tilted his chin up and looked down at Arik, a flash of disappointment tracing across his face. For a split second, Arik thought that this disappointment was aimed at him.

“No, and I looked. We have visited before, her and I, years ago and…” His voice grew thin. “No signs.”

“Well, if the two of you need a plan to infiltrate Moonagwa, then look no further. I have plenty of ideas.”

Arik set his fork down and looked in Meosa’s direction, waiting for him to continue.

“You actually want to hear my idea?”

“You are as much a part of this group as the disciple and myself,” Hojo told him. “If you have an idea, then we would like to hear it.”

“For one, I don’t think we should go with the beggar route this time. It’s too depressing, and sure I can throw my voice and both of you are dressed badly enough to look like a pair of beggars without really giving it much effort, but there must be another way. Nobility is a good option, and we have done that before in Avarga, at least a test run. But you are right that we don’t have the right clothing here, which would add another layer of complication. This is why I propose getting into the city using our natural abilities.”

“Our natural abilities?”

“That’s right, disciple, and I’m not talking about healing. You shouldn’t be healing anyone aside from yourself. No, I’m talking about our natural abilities.”

“Go on…” Hojo said, once Meosa stopped speaking.

“I really think the two of you are going to like this plan, but fair warning, it may be somewhat of a spectacle. Then again, I suppose we could just use your unique command over people’s minds to get us in. But this would be more fun.”

“Using Chimaura near the royal family may lead to our capture, kami. There are those who are trained to recognize Hidden Warriors without studying at the School of Illusion. If anything, it would be best for me not to use my skills once we enter Moonagwa.”

“Not a problem at all with the plan I’m cooking up, and we have a disciple here to make up for the fact we can’t rely on what you can do. After all, he’s not a Hidden Warrior, he would make a terrible shinobi, and he only has a surface knowledge of Chimaura, no offense.”

“None taken,” Arik said, secretly annoyed at Meosa’s bluntness. However, if the kami had an idea to get them into the city walls, he was all ears. Anything to obtain the sword and continue training.

“Here’s what we’re going to do…” Meosa explained the basics of his plan to Arik and Hojo, both listening intently. Once he was finished, Hojo gave him the nod of approval.

“I believe that will work.”

“Only if you can sell it,” Meosa reminded him.

“Don’t worry about that part.”

****

The deception part of being an illusionist was the least interesting to Arik.

If he had a choice between honing his combat skills or doing something like actually practicing and studying Chimaura, he would do either in a heartbeat. But there was something fun about it that he had yet to really allow himself to experience—becoming someone else, his cares never vanishing completely, but filtering away to a degree as he looked at himself in the compact mirror that he carried.

Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought.

Arik’s face was now painted with white makeup, a darkness under his eyes rimmed with red. There was a circle on the center of his forehead, which Hojo said was a comedic look in the Jade Realm, Arik’s long hair pulled into three ponytails.

He looked ridiculous, yet he mirrored Hojo’s styling, the master illusionist also with the white face paint, darkness under his eyes outlined in red, a circle on his forehead, Hojo no longer in his conical hat.

They left the safe house weaponless, both with their robes folded up at the sleeves, their haori capes thrown over one shoulder and tied to their waists using the sanjaku cloth. Hojo had even changed the way he walked, the man purposely leading with his right foot, giving himself a small bounce as he stepped up to it, a comical limp.

“Tonight, we make it into Moonagwa. Tomorrow, we will seek out the itako.”

“And in the meantime?” Meosa asked Hojo in a snarky way. “I suppose you and the disciple could have a few ales.”

“In the meantime, we do what we have set out to do. Entertain people and gather information. If that involves ale, then so be it.”

He really is serious about this, Arik thought, not quite certain of what it would look like to entertain the general public alongside Hojo. They hadn’t rehearsed anything, even if Meosa had a few ideas. Yet here they were, the trio now on the direct path that led to the outer rim of Moonagwa, its inner grounds protected by an earthen wall fifteen feet high.

Hojo had explained the basic layout of the mountain’s village as they put their makeup on, once again reminding Arik that getting inside the walls of Moonagwa was always a task that required heavy scrutiny, doubly so now that the royal family was there.

But there was always another way in, and they intended to seek that way out.

The settlement became apparent in the form of watchfires, the shadows of the trees and the tangled brush crossing their path. As things grew in illumination, Arik once again heard the telltale marks of civilization, from farm animals to people washing their dishes outside. They were still in a dry region, the night cold, the air thin as they climbed in altitude. Arik’s in-breaths had a harshness to them; it was noticeably harder to fill his lungs with oxygen.

“If anyone talks to you, let me be the one to respond, disciple.”

“Got it,” Arik told Meosa.

Moonagwa itself was built upon a flattened hillock that spanned, at least from what Arik could tell, for well over a mile. The outer rim of the city, all outside of its wall, had been constructed down the slopes of the hill, portions of it separated by ravines and city runoff. He noticed an aqueduct system off to his left, and a haze over Moonagwa blotted out the stars.

Soon enough, they came to a group of people standing outside a pub, listening as a man told a story about a famous master illusionist. “Torugan de Avarga knew he was in trouble,” the fellow said in a high-pitched, almost singsong voice. “Backed into a corner, surrounded by wiry bandits.”

The crowd gasped.

“Yet he wasn’t afraid as he pressed forward with his sword and ran it through the body of a man twice, no, three times his size! A giant of the mountains, of yesteryear, from the Jade Realm’s mythical past!” The storyteller stomped his foot down, affecting the movement of a giant. This startled one of the children seated before the storyteller. “Another came for Torugan, two swords whip fast, yet he knew how to deal with such a weapon, considering he had once trained with a combat master of the notorious Crimson Realm.”

Arik glanced at Hojo, yet he couldn’t get a read on the master illusionist’s face. He tuned back into what the storyteller was saying as the man had moved on to a dramatic reenactment of how Torugan had bested his enemies.

Once the storyteller finished, Hojo approached him, a smile forming on his face. Arik assumed that he would speak directly to the storyteller, but instead Hojo moved right past the man, to the crowd that had already gathered.

“You have never seen something like this,” Hojo said, a graveness to his tone that instantly drew the attention of the dozen or so people that had been listening to the storyteller. “There are things in this world that defy logic, and I am here to show them to you. Would you care to take a look?”

“That’s our cue,” Meosa told Arik. It was light, but he could feel Meosa’s power pushing him forward.

Naturally, or as naturally as he possibly could given the current state of affairs, Arik stepped up behind Hojo.

“I give you my assistant, Bariko. Now, watch carefully as I easily levitate my young assistant!”

Hojo pressed both hands out and clapped them together. As he did, Arik felt movement beneath his feet. He could tell that Meosa was trying to make it look like this wasn’t an easy task to perform, Arik’s knees wobbling as he finally levitated about three feet off the ground.

“How did you do that?” a boy at the front asked, the child quickly hushed by his father, who sat at one of the tables gripping a flagon of ale.

“The mysteries continue.” Hojo raised a single finger over his head, and as he did Arik moved with it. He then lowered the disciple to the ground.

“You are an illusionist,” said the storyteller as the crowd began to clap. “None of this is real!”

“None of this is real, eh? Then watch me take that cap of yours!” With a snap of his fingers, the brimless hat that had been sitting on the man’s head flipped to the ground. It hurried toward Hojo, as if it were being pulled by a rope. The master illusionist placed the cap on his own head, the storyteller with his fists tight at his sides now.

“Who would like a glass of water?”

Hojo approached one of the tables and grabbed an empty flagon. He showed the audience it was indeed empty and touched it with his finger. As he did, it began to fill with liquid. “I’m not finished yet,” he said once the liquid was up to the top. Hojo motioned down to the ground with the flagon and tossed the water into the air. As he did, it formed into the form of a bird before filtering away.

The crowed murmured with appreciation.

“Father, did you see that?” the same young boy asked.

“You, sir, are an illusionist!” the storyteller said, again coming forward. As he did he walked right into a wall of water, the man stepping out on the other side drenched from head to toe. He turned, shocked, the wall of water no longer there.

“Do something,” Meosa told Arik. “Make it look like it was you who made the water.”

“Um, sorry about that,” Arik said, the disciple going for a squeaky pubescent voice, the crowd laughing. “I was wondering where my wall of water went.”

“Disciple, we’re not paying you to be funny even if these morons seem to appreciate your humor!”

“You aren’t paying me,” Arik told Meosa through gritted teeth as he smiled at the crowd, most of whom were still laughing.

The storyteller turned to Arik, about to throw a punch when his mouth filled with water. His neck straightened and then he began gargling the water, spitting out little columns as he did so, a crazed look in his eyes. He dropped to his knees and began coughing, the man bowing at the crowd, making it seem as if he were part of the performance all along.

Of course, Arik knew this wasn’t the case.

It had been Meosa, likely speaking to the man and telling him what he would do if he didn’t obey him.

Now, they had a dilemma once the little performance ended. They would need to deal with the storyteller.

After a few more tricks, culminating in both Hojo and Arik levitating, the master illusionist removed his hat and offered it to the crowd, who quickly filled it up with Jadean sen.

“What… what are you?” the storyteller whispered as Hojo approached him and slipped an arm around his shoulder.

“Come with me, and all will be clear.”

****

Hojo led the storyteller to the far end of the pub. Once they were inside, the master illusionist located an empty booth that was secluded enough that they wouldn’t draw too much attention, one barely lit by a lantern with fogged-over glass. He sat down, the storyteller across from him, and Arik was just about to take a seat next to the storyteller when Hojo handed him some of the money they had received outside.

“Bring us some ale.”

“Sure,” Arik said, not quite sure of what Hojo was trying to do. Hojo now spoke in his normal voice, the storyteller either not noticing it, or not commenting.

“He’s right, you know. You would make a good barmaid,” Meosa told Arik as he approached a pair of men serving up drinks, the kami snickering at his own joke.

“Just… keep quiet.”

The crowd around them was rambunctious, reaching over one another and speaking loudly, which forced Arik to squeeze his way through until he could make it to the front. He ordered three ales, realized he was going to have a problem carrying them with the crowd, and went for it anyway, the disciple nearly spilling one of the drinks onto a man leaning far back in his chair.

“Ah, there you are, Bariko,” Hojo told Arik as he returned with the three flagons of ale. The disciples sat next to the storyteller, who now carried an accusatory look on his face.

“If you think that you’re going to fill me up with drink and I will tell you what I know, that is not the case. After what happened out there? After whatever illusionist magic you used against me? And how… how did you force me to gargle the water? Tell me. I demand to know! I should…” The storyteller turned to Arik, who was blocking his exit.

“No need to leave.” Hojo raised his flagon to the man, who begrudgingly did the same, almost as if it were a local custom to toast when toasted at. They both took a sip from their mugs.

“There? Happy? We’ve made peace, now let me go.”

“Relax, friend,” Hojo said calmly. “You want to know more about us? It’s not as crazy as it may seem. The royal family is in town, and we are in a bit of a conundrum.”

“How so? And again, why should I care? All of us are in a conundrum when they visit. It practically shuts the bloody city down.”

Hojo continued. “We are performers that travel with the royal court. We stayed a day longer in Iga, mostly on the account of my assistant here, who was quite sick.”

“Cough, disciple,” Meosa hissed at Arik.

He did as instructed.

“Well, don’t get me sick,” the storyteller said as he whipped his arm away from Arik.

“I’m not contagious.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

Arik merely smiled at him and tilted his head down respectfully.

“Play the role, disciple,” said Meosa. “The supposed illusionist clearly is scheming something up here; you don’t want to ruin it for him.”

“Luckily, an itako fixed Bariko here right up, but somehow, we ended up losing our papers,” Hojo told the storyteller.

“Your papers to get into the city?”

“The royal seal, all of it.” Hojo waved his hand as if it were something he was used to dealing with. “They need to make it easier. Everywhere we travel, we have to bring these papers and they get misplaced from time to time. Especially after a wild night out.”

“A wild night out, eh?” the man said with a knowing grin.

“Women in our realm seem to like magicians, at least the two of us. I’m sure you’ve experienced similar things, my friend.”

“Oh, please,” Meosa said, stifling a laugh. “If this works…”

“Yes, to be honest with you, I have. It’s amazing what someone will do for a flattering story. It truly depends on where I am working, but I have had a few small affairs myself,” the storyteller said as he took a proud sip of his drink. “Maybe a few large ones as well.”

Hojo encouraged him to speak, and soon the storyteller was going into what was clearly a hyperbolized version of something that had once happened to him with a pair of maidens from Katano. Arik never touched his ale, and soon, he ended up passing it to the storyteller, who drank it readily as he continued his tale.

After another couple of rounds, Hojo had the storyteller right where he wanted him. The master illusionist circled back around to his original question, getting into the city now that they didn’t have the correct paperwork.

“Look,” the storyteller said as he hunched forward, the man’s long mustache tracing across the top of his fresh flagon, “if you want to know a way into Moonagwa, I know of something that has worked in the past.” He hiccuped. “There’s this tunnel that runs beneath the city to the east that exits in an abandoned storehouse. It used to be for a variety of things, from certain types of entertainment for royal guests to troop movement just in case the city was ever attacked by the Crimson Realm. They keep the tunnel open, but most people don’t know about it. I’ve used it myself once or twice to get in to see an old friend of mine. Heh, let’s call them that.”

“Are there guards?” Arik asked before switching to his fabricated voice. “I mean, are there guards there?”

“There used to be guards and dogs, but they stopped with the canine patrols after one of them attacked a teenage girl who was sneaking out to meet her lover. It was gruesome. I remember that. Saw the body myself…” A haze fell over the man’s eyes. “Where was I?”

“We were just toasting,” Hojo said as he lifted his ale.

They toasted, and the storyteller finished his drink in a single gulp. He belched loudly and placed both arms on the table as he slowly lowered his head down. “Wouldn’t mind a little… little rest…”

“Let’s go,” Hojo told Arik. They left the pub and turned in the direction of the earthen walls that protected the Moonagwa. Once they were outside, Hojo stepped into the darkness and forced himself to vomit.

“The alcohol. I don’t need it in my system.”

“It is already in your system,” Meosa told the master illusionist.

“Less of it is now.”

“Before we go,” Arik said as Hojo began to turn to the east, “why didn’t you just use Chimaura? Why go to the trouble of getting him drunk to get information from him?”

“To show you something. Remember our discussion yesterday?” Hojo asked as he wiped his mouth. Arik could still smell the alcohol on him. “That man, the storyteller, is a perfect example of someone you would want to cultivate to become a local spy. He knows his way around, he’s social, and he likes to gossip.”

“You act like you didn’t goad him into telling you what you needed to know…”

“That is part of the process, kami. At least initially. But once you have the information you need, you also have control. If we did something like slip into the city and kill the royal family, we could always visit the storyteller and remind him that he was the one that revealed the passageway to us. We could extort more information in this manner.”

Meosa scoffed at this suggestion. “Ruthless shinobi.”

“We have been called worse.”

“But why not just use your power to get the information? That’s what I’m asking. If I was wounded, I would heal myself.”

“If you were wounded…” Hojo grinned at Arik. “Heal me. I can still feel the effects of the alcohol.”

“Answer me first.”

“Chimaura isn’t the power that one uses lightly. There is a method to it, and a madness that comes with overdoing it. We don’t need to get into that conversation for the time being, but the entire point of knowing how to use Chimaura, as I have said in different ways before, is to not have to use it, to use your own cunning in its place. That’s why it is different than Revivaura and Thunderaura. Is that a good enough explanation for you?”

Arik nodded. Hojo extended his arm to him and he placed his hand on it; the feeling of intoxication came to the disciple and quickly subsided due to his natural power.

“There, that’s better.” Hojo procured a cloth from the inner pocket of his robes. He used it to smear the makeup on his face, and handed it off to Arik once he was finished. “Clean up a little, and remember, once we are inside, we will continue to be weaponless so don’t push us into a situation where we may regret this. But we should be fine by that point. We get inside the walls, we stay somewhere out of sight, and tomorrow, we visit the itako.”

.Chapter Six.

“Defeat yesterday’s version of yourself for a brighter tomorrow.”

–A quote from Combat Master Jurstrom Yinzo, as told to a group of incoming blades at the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts, Year 787.

Hojo threaded through the outer districts of Moonagwa, something entirely fluid about the way he traveled. The more Arik watched him, the more he felt like the master illusionist had tuned himself to reality as if existence itself were an instrument, Hojo always one to stop at the right moment, avoiding detection, folding naturally in the landscape as they navigated densely packed living quarters.

It was a remarkable thing to watch.

He tried to mirror his movements, but he didn’t have the fluidity of a master illusionist. Arik nearly tripped on his feet as Hojo glided around a set of stone steps, effortlessly moving to the top of a wall made of stone and dropping down on the other side.

Arik caught up with Hojo, Meosa laughing in his head.

“You have the grace of an aging yamachichi,” said the aqueous kami, referring to yet another yokai that Arik had never heard of.

Arik grimaced and continued on, Hojo light on his feet as always as he stepped over a small trickle of foul-smelling water running from an outhouse. It was as if he had come to the area before and mapped everything out, moving like this was some kind of dance that he had performed a thousand times.

This is Chimaura as well, Arik thought as he watched the master illusionist seemingly float through reality.

A door started to open and Hojo was already stepping around it, his arm extending toward Arik and pulling him toward him just in time. A pig waddled out to their pathway and he glided past it, the swine just lifting his nostrils to the air once Hojo was gone. A creaking sound signaled that a window had opened. A young girl looked out; Hojo bent backward to avoid the arc of light that followed, once again averting detection.

It’s like he’s accurately predicting everything before it happens.

There was nothing rigid at all about Hojo’s movements, yet there was poise to them, which told Arik that if a trap was sprung, or some hidden opponent tried to jump out at them, Hojo would be ready.

Arik felt a pang of sadness that the School of Illusion had disbanded. In this way it was like his organization, although the teachings of the school and those who understood them still lingered in the Jade Realm. To do things like what Hojo was clearly capable of, and to recognize an aspect of chi that was much more existential, was incredibly rare. It was something that should be cherished.

All three branches should be cherished, in Arik’s opinion.

He didn’t know much about Yokaura, but he assumed that it was equally important. What if he spent as much time studying Chimaura as he did Revivaura? What if he could augment this by studying Thunderaura? Could there be such a thing as a master of all three chi branches? If there were, what would it do for the three realms of Taomoni? Could it show people that they had much more in common than they may have originally anticipated?

Arik cast these thoughts away for now.

He was starting to feel hopeful, and he knew that now wasn’t the time nor place for optimism. After all, the reason he was in Moonagwa was to find out how to procure a deadly weapon, one that he had no real idea about aside from the fact that Coro Pache once wielded it. There was a passage in his book about the weapon in usage, but all it said was that it was able to strike two opponents in the time it would take someone else to strike one. Arik didn’t know what this meant, but he was eager to find out.

Anything to give him an edge, literally.

They were just reaching the outskirts of the residential area when Hojo stopped Arik. He tilted his head ever so slightly, as if he were smelling something in the breeze. Arik tried to do the same, but didn’t notice anything aside from the scent of burning wood coming from a few of the homes.

“I want you to stay back,” was all he told Arik as he pressed forward, “and remain as hidden as possible.”

“What are you planning to do?”

Hojo ignored this question as he came around the bend in the road, passing around wooden containers used for grain. Rather than continue on, Arik crouched in the shadows, his eyes focused on the master illusionist as he approached a Jadean soldier.

Concentrating fully, trying not to blink, Arik watched Hojo creep up behind the larger Jadean guard. Hojo struck like a cobra, rushing forward in an instant, his hand going into the small of the man’s back, his other palm over his face, cupping his mouth. He dragged the soldier to the ground and held him for a moment until the man stopped resisting.

“He’s not like us,” Meosa reminded Arik.

“Not like us? I’m more like him than I am like you.”

This statement caused Meosa to laugh. “I suppose you’re right in that regard. But could you do something like that? I’m asking you honestly, my boy.”

Hojo glanced in Arik’s direction and motioned him forward. As he approached, he found the master illusionist uncorking a small flask he had tucked in the pocket of his robes. He spread some of the contents of the flask on the cloth part of the man’s armor, and rubbed some on his face as well.

Arik recognized the smell immediately.

“Alcohol? Where did you get that?”

“When he is discovered, which will happen on the next patrol, they will think that he drank himself into a stupor. He will deny this, of course. He will say that someone attacked him from behind and put him to sleep. They will laugh. The technique I used isn’t one that would be known by a common Jadean soldier. If there were true shinobi on patrol, that would be one thing.”

“You put him to sleep?”

“I did. A deep slumber that will add to his confusion when he wakes. There may be another soldier at the exit.” Hojo shook the flask, Arik hearing that it was about half full.

“Where did you get alcohol anyway?”

“I stole it from the storyteller,” Hojo told him, in a tone that made it sound like this should have been obvious. Arik thought back to Hojo’s interactions with the storyteller.

“I don’t remember—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Hojo motioned for Arik to follow him into the drainage ditch. They reached the cage locked from the outside, Arik assuming that Hojo would pick the lock. He did no such thing.

“The man has keys. Grab them, and return.”

Arik turned around and crouched before the soldier, wary to go through the man’s pockets. He could smell the alcohol now, and there was a warmth radiating from the man. It was even stranger once he actually had to touch him, Arik expecting the soldier to come awake any second.

The soldier snorted, causing Arik to nearly fall on his back. He caught himself just in time, found the ring of keys, and returned to Hojo.

The master illusionist unlocked the cage door and opened it. The door was also lockable from the inside. “This is good for us,” he told Arik after he checked the bolt again. “Return the key to the soldier just how you found it.”

Arik once again approached the man and stuffed the key into the pocket of his robes, gritting his teeth the entire time as Meosa chastised him for moving slowly.

“He won’t wake, and if he does, the supposed illusionist can just put him to sleep again. Next time you’re restless, perhaps he can put you to sleep as well… ha!”

Arik didn’t reply to Meosa as he returned to Hojo, the pair soon entering the drainage ditch once the door was locked behind them. They crept along in the darkness, the smell of wet metal overpowering. Hojo seemed to know the way, and every time Arik thought he had lost the master illusionist, he felt a tug on his sleeve.

“Just ahead.”

“Why aren’t there torches in here?” Meosa grumbled, even though he knew the answer to this question. This was supposed to be a secret passageway, and lighting it up would expose it to outside influences. This did get Arik thinking about the guard that Hojo had neutralized. Wouldn’t his placement be an indication that something was important there as well?

Am I really starting to think like an illusionist? Arik thought at some point as he came to a stop.

Hojo started up a ladder, a bit of light from above allowing Arik to see where he was going now. He soon joined the master illusionist, the two climbing for a decent amount of time and arriving at the back of a storage room, just as the storyteller had said.

“This could be the tricky part,” Hojo told Arik, the master illusionist now crouched by a crate. “The guard will likely be directly in front of that door, but there may be another solution.” He tilted his chin up to the rafters, Arik noticing that the boards looked quite sturdy. “I will check it.”

Hojo produced his grappling hook and sent it up.

Once it was secure, he began climbing, the master illusionist effortlessly scaling to the top of the rafters of the storage house, where he crouched and shuffled forward. More light came into the room as Hojo found an exit point and opened it.

He didn’t need to tell Arik to follow him. The disciple went to the rope and began pulling himself up, secretly appreciating the boost that Meosa gave him toward the middle. He could do it, he’d used a grappling hook before, but the boost helped, and soon he was in the rafters as well.

He removed the grappling hook and carried it with him as he joined the master illusionist, who now crouched before a triangular opening in the rafters.

“From here we move to that rooftop, and down to the ground as if we were inside the city limits all along.” Hojo flicked his finger in the direction they would go. “You have done well tonight, disciple, but we aren’t in the clear yet. Stay vigilant.”

****

It wasn’t what Arik expected, but nothing was when it came to studying under Hojo.

He felt stupid now, assuming that the School of Illusion had a place in the city limits, Arik all but expecting there to be a hidden nook somewhere with a bed for him to sleep in. Instead, the disciple found himself in an old barn, one of its walls pressed up against the earthen wall that separated Moonagwa from the rest of the Jade Realm. Not only that, there were a pair of goats currently residing in the barn, and while they didn’t mind Arik and Hojo’s presence, they were much more inquisitive than he would have liked.

Arik tried to get some sleep, first going through a breathing technique he had learned in his first years at the Academy of Healing Arts, counting his inhales and his exhales, imagining his chi replenishing. When this didn’t work, he tried to quiet his mind, the disciple noticing at some point that Hojo was fast asleep, not at all disturbed by where they had chosen to slumber.

If Hojo could do it, he could at least give it a try.

Soon, Arik was out as well, no dreams, one of the goats that had taken a liking to him settling next to the disciple. He officially awoke hours later with the same goat now gently nudging him in the back with its stumpy little horns, Hojo already seated and petting the other goat.

“You would be the kind that would befriend a goat over a person,” said Meosa, in his vaporous form not far from Arik.

“I would have an animal if I wasn’t always on the move,” Hojo said, once again softening the biting nature of Meosa’s remark with his reply. It seemed relatively impossible to get under Hojo’s skin, at least from what Arik could tell. He took some inspiration in this, especially as Meosa started to tease him.

“Once the goat gets bigger, maybe you can ride it, my boy.”

Arik shook his head. He sat up, the smells of the barn all hitting him at once.

“Are we going to role-play as goats any longer, or are we ready to go find this lady shaman?” asked Meosa. “Not that I mind staying in a barn with the two of you, but I can certainly think of places I would rather be.”

“I would rather be in Avarga,” Hojo told the aqueous kami. Hojo used the bowl of murky water before him to clean the rest of the make-up off his face. Hojo motioned to it and Arik began doing the same, the cool water invigorating in its own way.

Arik checked himself in his compact mirror to make sure all the make-up was gone. After he dried off, he made sure that he still had the copied message from the Coro Pache book. Ready to learn of the itako’s prophecy, Arik joined Hojo, who was now crouched in another area of the barn.

“Remember, as naturally as possible. We do not have papers, and if we are asked for them we will be forced to make a hasty decision.”

“What would we do?”

“You wouldn’t do anything, disciple. I would use Chimaura. I know that you have questions regarding the proper usage of this power, and this would be one of them. We are putting ourselves in a situation where it will be harder for us to deceive others, not only with the daylight, but the location itself. If we are in fact checked by one of the guards, I will handle everything. Do not worry about that part. You should only worry about what the itako has to say about this passage. You do have it, do you not?”

“I do.”

“Good. Say goodbye to the goats and we will leave. I’ll do the same.”

Arik was surprised to watch Hojo slip around him and drop before the goat that he had been petting earlier, a brindle one with blue eyes. He placed his hand on its head once again and moved on, Meosa never commenting on the master illusionist’s actions.

Hojo led Arik out of the barn, the two hypervigilant as they transferred onto a cobblestone road covered in mossy patches. It was remarkable what the city planners had done with Moonagwa. Everything was clean and orderly, no beggars in the street, and little grime. All the buildings were well-maintained too, many with elaborate gables painted white.

Arik spotted three of the city guards with shields, each carrying a spear that had Jadean flags draped around them. Hojo naturally turned well before they reached the guards, the duo transitioning to a narrow lane that passed in front of an old cobbler seated on a stool, hammering nails into the bottom of a leather boot. Rather than continue on, Hojo stopped before the man and greeted him.

“It appears that the supposed illusionist likes running his gums,” Meosa said as Hojo conversed with the cobbler, the man with cracked wrinkles on his face and thick knuckles covered in calluses. He had the forearms of someone who worked with his hands, and while he was thin, he was also muscular.

At just about the point that Arik tuned into what Hojo was saying, the master illusionist moved on, waving goodbye to the man.

“Did you know him?”

“No, but he thinks I do. This is a subtle way to cover your tracks. If we had caught the eyes of those guards, they would have witnessed us spend some time speaking to the cobbler and may have assumed that we were locals that they just hadn’t seen before. There could be other guards, too, those on perches using monocles, spotters. One never knows, and because one never knows, it is best to always blend in regardless of the proximity to your target.”

“She lives around here?”

“The itako does, yes. Right here, actually.” Hojo stopped in front of a nondescript building with a thatched roof. There were no markings on it, but upon further examination, Arik noticed that small figurines had been set up around the entrance steps.

“Shoes off, disciple.”

Arik did as instructed, placing his boots next to Hojo’s. He noticed a difference in the way that their gear was made, Arik wondering if there was a specific cobbler that shinobi used. He hadn’t given much thought to Hojo’s footwear, but looking at it now, he could tell that it was much more malleable than his.

Careful of the figurines that lined the steps, Hojo reached the top and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he went for the handle to find that it was loose. The master illusionist let himself in, and motioned for Arik to follow.

Inside was something else entirely, the room wide with high ceilings, various items draped from the rafters. In his quick look, Arik saw everything from hanging bones to rune carvings and other symbols. There was also a powerful scent to the air, something between burning wood and incense, which was coming from two trays of red embers set up on either side of the door.

Seated in the center of the room on a wooden block was the itako, her face painted with white and red lines. She wore a headpiece with small antlers on it and had numerous piercings on each ear, her robes fashioned out of a thick green material that matched the gemstones on each of her fingers.

“We are here for your assistance,” Hojo said as he came forward and got onto his knees. He bent forward and touched his forehead against the ground, mere inches away from the woman’s feet.

“State the purpose of your visit,” the itako said, her voice telling Arik something else about the woman. She was young, and couldn’t have been much older than him, her shamanic gear aiding her to some extent, especially with the way it obscured her form.

“We have a text that needs completing.”

“And what do you bring me?” she asked Hojo.

“What is it you would like?”

The itako tilted her head to Arik. “For one, I would like for you to show yourself, kami.”

“If that’s what you want.” Hojo swept his hand toward Arik. “Reveal yourself.”

“Telling me what to do…” Meosa flared up, and took his form next to Arik. “Happy?”

“Good.” The woman took a slow sip from a small cup of tea. It was then that Arik noticed just how dilated her eyes were. Then he saw something else, something he should have sensed earlier. The itako was bleeding. Not only that, she was bleeding badly, the blood dripping from the sleeve of her green robe onto a saucer.

“Are you…” Arik wasn’t supposed to speak, nor was he supposed to reveal his powers. Instead of completing the sentence, he merely bowed his head.

“If you are wondering if I’m injured, a bit, yes. I had to let my blood out this morning as a precaution. Do not mind the blood. It will…” She slouched forward.

“Disciple,” Hojo said with urgency.

That was the only word that Arik needed to hear.

He was next to the itako just a few moments later, chi swirling around his hands as he began to heal the woman. Arik experienced the wound for just a moment. It was deep, but it was also fresh, which made him wonder when she had actually cut herself.

He didn’t have to wait much longer for his answer as she came around with her other hand, a knife in it, the itako driving the tiny blade into Arik’s arm. He jumped back, more surprised by her movement than he was by the sudden flash of pain.

Arik grabbed the small blade and yanked it from his arm, wincing as he did so, the wound starting to heal up almost immediately. Hojo picked up the blade and pointed it at the itako.

“This wasn’t the way your predecessor behaved.”

“I was merely testing a vision,” she said, completely relaxed now, yet carrying a mischievous grin on her face. “I’ve never… never been healed like that before.”

“So you stabbed him?” Meosa asked incredulously. “Say the word, disciple, and I will drown the devil woman.”

“No need for that,” Arik told him as he glanced at the wound. Aside from the dried blood, there wouldn’t be anything left of it. Arik approached the itako and sat before her, hoping to show the young woman how little her actions had disturbed him. Hojo remained standing, the tiny dagger he was carrying now dripping Arik’s blood on the wooden floor.

“You said you had a vision?” Arik asked.

“I did, yes. A disciple, a Hidden Warrior, and a kami. And here you are.”

“Have you gone bloody mad?” Meosa asked her. “What if your vision hadn’t been true? You would have stabbed yourself for no reason, you devil! You could have died!”

“Yes, I could have, kami. Yet here I am. For others to have faith in my visions, I have to have faith in them as well. After all, you came here for me to decipher a text for you, did you not?”

“That is right,” Hojo said as he regained his composure. He placed the knife on a side table and returned, the master illusionist taking a seat behind Arik.

“I’ve now shown you my power, which means that you will better trust the message I decipher. Bring it here, disciple.”

Arik cautiously approached and handed her the slip of paper.

“Moonagwa light court… Cylindrical crystal… Whispering sword…” The itako looked up at Arik. “And this is it?”

“That’s all we have, yes.”

A slight glaze traced over her eyes, the itako moving as if she were half-possessed. “Where did it come from?”

“The passage is from a book about Coro Pache called Legends of the War Priest.”

“Do you have the book with you?” the itako asked in a voice that was no longer her own. Whereas before she sounded like a young woman, her voice now resembled that of an old hag.

“It wasn’t easy to get into the city. We left it behind and brought the message instead.”

She slowly nodded at Hojo’s answer. “I… see. Not only is the message incomplete, but there is another part of it. Yes… I feel it now.”

“Of course there is another part of it, the part of the message that is missing,” said Meosa, barely hiding his annoyance. “We already figured that part out, human.”

“Another part, kami, not related to the text. What was around the passage? On the pages that preceded or followed it?”

“Around it?” Arik thought back to the passage. He remembered a drawing on a page behind it, one that hadn’t been torn out, but that was about it. The rest was text. “There was a drawing of…” He considered how to describe it. “It was like someone had pressed a hand fan onto the page and stenciled it.”

“The hand fan. Do you mean it was half a circle, something of the sort?” By this point, the itako had lowered her hands by her sides, her fingers tapping against the wooden floor. “Please, illusionist, some water.” She motioned toward a pot near the wall. Hojo used the ladle to scoop the water out into a ceramic saucer and gave it to her.

As he joined them again, Arik noticed a hint of alcohol to the substance, strong enough that he could smell it from where he sat.

The itako drank from the saucer, the copied text still on the ground in front of her.

Arik had left space for the passages to be complete, and he was about to offer to find a writing utensil when the itako used a large needle to draw a cut near her wrist. Shifting her wrist down, she slowly began to fill the saucer with blood.

Yet again, Arik had to suppress the urge to heal the wounds she had just made. Once there was a little blood in the saucer, the itako dipped the tip of the needle in it.

“I will complete the text. That drawing… the one you mentioned… it is no ordinary drawing.  It is… Yes… Yes… I can see it. First, the text. Moonagwa light court… mourning.” As she said this, she wrote the word ‘mourning’ in blood next to the text that Arik had written. “Cylindrical crystal… made of chi.” She wrote this as well, coming to the last phrase. “Whispering sword whispering.”

“Moonagwa light court mourning. Cylindrical crystal made of chi. Whispering sword whispering…” Arik repeated the phrase to himself, trying to make sense of it. “What does it mean? What is a cylindrical crystal made of chi?”

The itako extended her arm to Arik. “Heal me, disciple,” she said, her voice her own again. He did as she instructed, racing over to her immediately, the wound vanishing completely. The only thing left behind was the small saucer of blood. “Thank you.”

“Do you have to cut yourself every time?” he asked, even though it was clear that this was how she performed her magic. Arik noticed dozens of scars and nicks on her arms. At quick glance, he even noticed a few on her clavicle, which was partially exposed because of the way she sat.

“I do, yes. It is how I activate my command over chi. I’ve grown used to it by now.”

“What she isn’t telling you, disciple, is that Chimaura is also utilized by shamans across the Jade Realm. They are able to learn and harness a certain aspect of it, one that the School of Illusion certainly taught and sought to understand, but not one that was our main focus. It can be hard to tap into, even harder to teach.”

“Well put, illusionist,” the itako said as Arik sat across from her again.

“The entire Jade Realm is mental if you ask me.”

“She did figure out the text,” Arik reminded Meosa.

“Perhaps. But what does that even mean, my boy?”

Hojo answered for Arik. “The Mourning Courtyard is outside the city walls. It is the gravesite for people who have lived in Moonagwa. There are dozens of crypts there as well. It used to be called the Light Court. Moonagwa light court mourning…”

“Yes, I believe that is so,” the female shaman said softly.

Meosa spoke again. “Fine, so then the weapon is there, in one of the crypts. Which one, hmmm?”

The itako shook her head. “There are too many to be certain, kami. The second part, cylindrical crystal made of chi. I believe that is what you need to decipher which crypt the Whispering Sword is in, and I believe the map you need is in the book.”

“Crystal code…” Arik looked up at the young, shamanic woman. “I didn’t see any maps.”

“The etching of the fan you spoke of is actually a map.”

“Wait, are you saying it’s an anamorphic code?” asked Hojo, the master illusionist running his hand along the contours of his chin. “Because that would make sense.”

“What is that exactly? I’m asking for the disciple.”

Hojo nodded at Meosa’s question. “It is an old shinobi technique that has been lost to time. An anamorphic code is a message etched out on a piece of paper only to be deciphered by a mirror placed at the center point of the art. You would look at the mirror to understand the message through the reflection. Put another way: to a random person, the art looks like bird scratch or maybe a drawing of a hand fan, as you put it. With the mirror, the code is deciphered in the reflection.”

“So we get a mirror.”

“I don’t think it will be that easy, kami. It mentions crystal, cylindrical in shape, made of chi.”

“Yokaura.”

“Yes… Yokaura. I have read about shinobi using this technique before, using a piece made of chi itself as part of a code, but have never personally witnessed it,” Hojo told the group.

“To decipher the art, you will need to get a crystal made of chi. Is this something you can obtain?” the itako asked Hojo. “Do you think… do you think it is something you could craft yourself?”

Hojo bit his lip at the question. “It’s not something I’ve attempted before.”

“Or, you can ask your dear friend who has been alive for much longer than any of you, if he knows someone that can do something like this. Maybe this someone even lives in this region.”

“Do you know someone?” Arik asked Meosa after no one had taken the bait.

“I may. There was a kami who lived on an island in the center of the lake in the mountains west of here. An old friend named Sukitoma.”

The itako’s eyes bulged slightly. “The Crystal Castle. You mean the crystal kami that lives in the Crystal Castle? Yes, of course. That would make sense.”

“Then that’s where we should go. If you’re wondering why the locals call it the Crystal Castle, my boy, it is because it truly is a home formed out of crystal. In the winter, the lake freezes over and it looks like ice, yet Sukitoma’s home remains in the spring and summer. The lake is rather large; getting across it isn’t something that people tend to do, at least they didn’t in my time.”

The female shaman seemed to agree with Meosa. “It is a sacred lake. Itako and other sorcerers used to go there for rituals, but the tourists have made that more difficult with their presence. I visited there when I took my power.”

“If anyone can make a cylindrical crystal out of chi, it is Sukitoma.”

“Then that settles it. We will check the text for the etching, and go to this lake. Once we have the key, we will retrieve the Whispering Sword.” Hojo stood, and slowly bowed at the itako. “Thank you for all you have done here today. I trust you will keep the details of our visit to yourself.”

The itako returned his bow. “Discretion is in my nature.”

Hojo removed his hat and tilted his head as he looked at her, a paleness spreading over the itako’s face.

“Let’s… Let’s step outside, disciple,” Meosa said.

“Yes,” Hojo told the pair. “I’ll meet you out there in a moment.”

.Chapter Seven.

“Do not fret, do not get over involved. If you are entangled, it is because you cannot let go of yourself or your desire for things to work to your own benefit.”

–Madame Noll Arimask in her Scroll on Better Order, later published in the Jadean Book of Proverbs, Year 1475.

If getting into Moonagwa was difficult, getting out proved to be relatively easy.

Arik knew there was a lesson in this as they casually walked out the front entrance, none of the Jadean guards checking if they belonged or not. Perhaps it helped that Hojo carried himself in a bit of a different way, that of someone of importance, with his shoulders back and chest puffed up. Arik had attempted to walk like this earlier, but it felt wrong, and he didn’t want to stand out. So he imagined himself as Hojo’s assistant, and fell easily into this supposed role.

The master illusionist relaxed a little once they cleared the guards, and started on the path that led back to the Hidden Warrior safe house. It was as if a swell of energy left him, Hojo with his trademark buoyancy, the way he carried himself as if he had one foot in the mortal plane and the other in the afterlife.

They reached their safe house to find the door wide open, both Arik and Hojo tensing immediately. The master illusionist crouched in the woods, his eyes fixated on the inside of the home. “Kami, can you tell me if someone is in there?”

“Gladly.”

Arik felt a tingling sensation as Meosa left his body. It wasn’t that of a weight being lifted, but it did cause him to notice his newfound lightness, and this strange desire for Meosa to return. After all, they fed off each other’s energy in a way.

He thought back to the guard that Hojo had robbed the previous day. Perhaps the man had been able to track them, although Arik didn’t think this was the case. Could it be another high-level illusionist? Tayaura?

Meosa returned a few moments later, seemingly spooked. “He may have sensed me, I don’t know. You don’t happen to know an illusionist that wears dark robes with white stitching, do you? He is heating up what is left of the meal that you made the previous day. Or night. Our schedule is very strange.”

Arik looked back to the entrance to see a man with dark hair step out, a plate of food in his hands. “You should be better at hiding yourself than that, shadow-brother.”

“Sengum Minamoto,” Hojo whispered, gritting his teeth.

Sengum looked around, not yet seeing Hojo. “Is that a new technique? Some command over water? Did you start studying Revivaura?”

Rather than answer, Hojo walked out of the thicket of trees. With the tilt of his head, he gestured for Arik to follow.

“But our weapons are inside…”

“I will be ready if we need to do something,” Meosa said so that only Arik could hear him.

The disciple dropped his hand into the front of his robes, glad he had brought the Mask of the Fallen with him. Before he slipped out of the tree, he placed the mask over his face and tied the purple thread at the back, his power swelling and settling once he stepped out of the woods and joined Hojo.

“You have a student? But I thought the School of Illusion had disbanded.” Sengum Minamoto took a bite from his food, made a disgusted face, and tossed the plate to the side. “You never were a good cook.”

Looking at him now, Arik realized he might have passed the man a million times in the streets. Sengum had both a recognizable face, and one that you would never be able to remember, the only detail about him being his unique robes, and the white stitching on them. He was about Hojo’s size, yet a little taller, the muscles of his neck and arms more defined, perhaps a few years younger as well.

“Recently, some of my people have run into trouble. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, shadow-brother?”

“We are merely passing through.”

“Is that a philosophical statement?”

“If you want it to be.”

Sengum’s eyes darted to Arik. “And the student of yours, what is your name?”

Arik didn’t answer; he merely stared the master illusionist down as defiantly as he could. As he did so, he found his jaw starting to quiver beneath his mask, the answer coming from his lips before he could stop it. “Arik Dacre.”

“Careful, disciple, he has his hold over you!” This voice belonged to Meosa, who was speaking quietly enough that Arik could barely hear him, as if the pair had been separated by a small distance.

Something was off…

Chimaura? Arik barely thought as he grew transfixed by Sengum.

“A northern name. What would a northerner be doing in the Jade Realm under the tutelage of a failed master illusionist? How strange. How very strange.”

“Is there something you need?” Hojo asked.

Sengum Minamoto motioned to the safe house. “I’m not allowed to enjoy the fruits of our labor? Our predecessor set these up for all of us, you know, and certainly not for those who have abandoned the path to become wandering magicians. I saw your performance last night, by the way. Who knew you could be so entertaining, and this new water skill of yours! Care to elaborate? I must admit, I’m surprised that you would be in Moonagwa, of all places. It’s almost as if you have been following the royal family. Or maybe you came up this way from Katano after killing several of my men, drowning others by the beach. Sound familiar?”

“We had nothing to do with that.”

“A trail of bodies in the Jade Realm without a master illusionist behind it? I severely doubt that, shadow-brother. That said, you do look weaker than you have in the past, almost as if you have given up. Is it Hidden Warrior Sickness? Poor fellow. Have you finally succumbed to who you are? Weak in body, spirit, and mind. What was it Hirokuni used to say? An illusionist is only as good as his façade? I can’t remember. Whenever I think of him, I recall the terror in his eyes as life slowly left his body. But he had a choice, and you do as well.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“You don’t even have a weapon.”

“I don’t need a weapon,” Hojo told him, the master illusionist lowering his head.

“A threat? That is uncharacteristic of you, shadow-brother.”

“We are merely passing through. If you would like a challenge, you can go to Iga and look for a warrior pilgrimage, but if you continue to stand in my way, I won’t hold back, Sengum.”

A snarl formed on Sengum’s face. “I suppose I could get out of your way.”

He appeared directly behind Hojo, as if he had landed in a bolt of lightning.

Schikkt!

Hojo ducked a seven-inch gauntleted blade that protruded from Sengum’s arm and jumped a few paces back. “The book, our weapons,” he told Arik as he continued to engage the armed illusionist. “Go!”

Arik charged to the safe house and grabbed their things, starting with his satchel, the Coro Pache book inside. As he did so, Meosa went for their swords, the kami just about to separate from his body when Arik heard what sounded like a blade going through someone’s body followed by a grunt.

“We have to do something!”

“No,” Arik told Meosa as he stepped to the door, their bags, and both swords with him now. “Remember, you are our secret weapon. I… I can handle this.”

“Have you gone mad? You’re not going to be able to combat a Hidden Warrior! Listen to reason, disciple!”

“I have a better idea.” Arik drew Hojo’s sword from its scabbard, his eyes falling to the master illusionist, who was now bent over, bleeding from the torso.

“You can run along now,” Sengum told Arik, a crazed look in his eyes. “I’m sending him where he needs to go, to the place where all the Hidden Warriors before him have gathered, a beautiful, heavenly place. It will be so nice for you, old friend, my shadow-brother, to see our teacher Hirokuni again. One day I will join you and we will laugh about all of this!”

“I’m not leaving without him.”

Sengum’s eyes narrowed on Arik. “He isn’t going to survive this wound. Either go, or I can just kill you both.”

“You wouldn’t stand a chance,” Arik told Sengum, trying to exude as much confidence as he could. Even though there was a red string of energy now connecting the tip of his blade to Sengum Minamoto, he’d seen how fast the Hidden Warrior had moved earlier; Arik knew that he wouldn’t be able to land a strike, not in his wildest dreams, yet the way he’d said this felt almost as if the mask had amplified his desire for revenge, modified his voice.

“What are you doing, disciple?” Meosa asked as Arik took a step closer to Sengum Minamoto. “Pay attention, you fool, he’s a true Hidden Warrior!”

Arik spoke: “Let me take him to Moonagwa, where he can be properly buried.”

“Properly buried? I have to properly kill him before you can properly bury him.” Sengum Minamoto brought his arm back, as if he were going to uppercut Hojo and send his gauntleted blades through the bottom of his chin. As he did Hojo multiplied, Arik gasping as the master illusionist formed a circle of replicants around Sengum Minamoto, several of them hazy.

“My sword,” they all said at once.

“Secret weapon be damned!” Meosa told Arik as he came alive, stripped the sword from his hand, and shot forward. Suddenly, all the replicants were also holding swords. Sengum now wore a newfound sense of fear on his face, one that quickly twisted into a smile as he loosed a kunai from the sleeve of his robes toward the safe house.

The explosion that followed caused Arik to fly several feet forward. Another took place off to the left, dirt and debris kicking up into the air, fire lifting and settling into golden plumes.

Arik coughed up smoke. Abrasions covered his body, shrapnel jutted out of his back. A portion of his shoulder was on fire, the flesh beneath his robes broiled from the heat. He ignored it all as he dragged forward and found Hojo, the master illusionist once again on the ground, his hands on his stomach where he had been stabbed.

As far as Arik could tell, Sengum had vanished.

Even though he was gravely injured himself, the disciple turned his focus to Hojo.

****

Hojo’s stab wound was deep. It had punctured several internal organs, yet Arik was able to heal them all before slumping over.

He sucked in a deep breath as the dust settled, the disciple finally turning his focus to the explosion and how badly it had burned him. Voices came to him, one belonging to Meosa, the other belonging to Hojo, who now stood in a haggard way with his sword drawn, guarding Arik.

He ignored them.

You can do this.

(You can do this.)

Arik focused on his training to better heal his wounds.

He still wore the Mask of the Fallen, the legendary item warm against his face as he placed both palms on the ground. Arik knew that in the heat of battle he wouldn’t have this long to heal, and that was if he was given the chance in the first place. This wasn’t like what he had trained for back at the Academy, most of the healing scenarios based on taking care of others, not one’s self in the aftermath of a series of explosions.

You can do this.

(You have to do this.)

Arik gritted his teeth as the shrapnel pressed out of his back and the burnt flesh on his shoulder stitched back together. The blades of grass beneath his hands started to change color as he released the little bit of his power left in his body. He wasn’t trying to transfer his wounds to the grass, it merely happened in his focus on healing up as quickly as possible.

“We need to go, disciple,” Hojo said in a low voice. The master illusionist looked just about as tattered as he did, portions of his robes burned out, dried blood splattered across his torso. “Before we do, we need supplies.”

“Where is Sengum?”

“Gone, for now. But he will be back, and the explosions will draw the attention of the city guards once they see the smoke. Come. Let’s grab our things and head to the well.”

“The well?” Arik asked, recalling that it had been in the woods behind the Hidden Warrior retreat, not far from the stream where he had gotten fresh water. He remembered wondering at the time why they didn’t just use the well.

“Trust me.”

Arik found the bag with his shinobi tools and the Coro Pache book. Once he located his sword, he joined Hojo, both of them slipping into the woods behind the safe house, what was left of the thatched roof still on fire.

They reached the well and Hojo led Arik to an alcove just beyond it, where there was a shovel, the blade covered in rust. The master illusionist began digging, the shovel quickly striking something hard.

“You should have… you should have let me do something,” Meosa finally said. “I could have killed the other illusionist!”

“I didn’t…”

“What did you intend to do anyway in challenging the man, disciple? What were you going to do?” asked Meosa. “Are you a fool? He was a Hidden Warrior! You’re a disciple, not a cold-blooded killer, not like him…”

“I thought he would either…” Arik settled his thoughts, well aware that adrenaline was still racing through him. “I thought that he may simply leave, and then I could have healed Hojo. Another thought was that he would try to kill me and I would let him stab me, then he would leave and I would heal both of us.” Arik glanced at Hojo, who had just started to reveal a buried chest. “I also thought that maybe he would approach me, and I could transfer some of the wound that I absorbed from the itako. I… I was going to try to kill him.”

“You will not be the one that kills Sengum Minamoto, disciple.” Hojo pulled a medium-sized chest out of the ground and began dusting it off. “In the end, he will get himself killed with his brazen behavior. Those explosions could have hit him as well.”

Meosa scoffed at this statement. “I would have sworn that you would be the one to stake a claim in his death, but here I am, surprised by you yet again.”

“I do not wish death upon anyone if I can help it, kami. It is bad luck.” Hojo popped open the chest to reveal a canvas sack that had been tied off with a rope. There was fresh clothing inside, as well as other shinobi tools such as a grappling hook, a pair of long daggers, and kunai. He saw a few other items inside as well, shinobi tools that Arik didn’t recognize.

How many caches like this are there in the Jade Realm? he thought as Hojo handed him a fresh set of robes.

“They should be about your size. Put them on, and then we will head toward the mountains. We can skirt around Moonagwa and visit the Mourning Courtyard just to see what it looks like. We will need some food as well, and I will need a hat.” Hojo showed Arik a wad of sen that he had procured from the chest. “You do know how to get there, right? The Crystal Castle?”

“You know how to find clothing and knives hidden in treasure chests by past shinobi, do you not?” Meosa told Hojo. “Of course, I know how to get to the Crystal Castle. I’m not some sort of brick-headed gaki fond of fingering his perineum. I am a kami of renown!”

As usual, Hojo didn’t acknowledge Meosa’s remark. The master illusionist merely turned his focus to Arik. “For now, we need to change clothes, wash our faces, and move on. Time is of the essence, disciple.”

****

Hojo and Arik reached the Mourning Courtyard, both in their new robes, their wounds completely healed. As he had been since they left the Hidden Warrior retreat, Hojo was on high alert, jumpier than normal, which was understandable considering their encounter with Sengum Minamoto. They had come across several people along the way toward the outskirts of Moonagwa, and he’d almost drawn his sword on a man that looked at them for a second too long.

For the most part, Meosa had remained quiet, but he had whispered to Arik at some point to keep his eye on the supposed illusionist, that something wasn’t right. Once again, Arik wished this was something he could help with.

He was aware that it was a necessity to be cautious before, especially as he was potentially the last healer left in their entire world. But now that Sengum Minamoto knew of their existence, and had clearly proven how easy it was for him to track them, it was going to make everything they did, and every place they went, ripe for some sort of ambush.

Arik had already pieced together how Sengum had triggered the explosives with his kunai. With that sort of skill and cunning, an attack could come at any time. It was clear without mentioning it to Hojo they severely needed to limit their public interactions.

“I see now why it would be difficult for us to locate whatever crypt the Whispering Sword is stashed in,” said Meosa as Arik finally shifted his focus from the master illusionist to the hills upon hills of graves that now stood before them. The magnitude of it all nearly brought tears to his eyes as he remembered those who had died back in his Academy, his classmates, his mother and father.

That was then, this is now.

Arik took a deep breath in through his nostrils and let the feeling pass.

The Mourning Courtyard was in the center of the graveyard, with a fountain facing to the east. There were a pair of men seated on stools, flowers and other offerings laid out on maroon blankets before them. They wore hats similar to the one that Hojo always had, conical, with a triangular slit cut into the brim allowing someone to partially view their face.

“I would like to buy a hat,” Hojo said as he approached the man on the left, who mostly sold trinkets and small carvings. As they had taken the steps to the courtyard, Arik noticed these carvings laid out before some of the grave markers.

“Hats? I do not sell hats,” the man told him without looking up at Hojo. “I wear them.”

“I would like to buy the hat you are wearing.” Hojo produced a wad of sen. “How much?”

Arik could almost smell the bills as Hojo began counting them out, the sound drawing the merchant’s attention as he looked up, the gray hairs from his scraggly beard now visible.

The merchant grumbled a number and Hojo gave him the bills. The man followed through with his conical hat, which Hojo placed on his head. It looked almost exactly like the one he had worn before, just a bit more weathered.

“I always wondered where you got those hats. As it turns out, you buy them from graveyard merchants. How quaint,” Meosa said once they’d left the courtyard.

Hojo led Arik toward the crypts, the disciple noticing that there were dozens upon dozens of them.

“There can’t be this many people in Moonagwa. I mean, over time, yes but…”

“They aren’t all from Moonagwa. This is a famous place to be buried, disciple. The wealthy of the Jade Realm pay to have their bodies transported here. The courtyard, while empty today, often hosts gatherings and other events for the dead. The royal families are buried here as well.” Hojo motioned to the right to a series of crypts on the highest hill, freshly arranged Jadean flags draped from them. “It is an honor to be buried here.”

“Is it where you would like to be buried?” Arik didn’t know why he asked this question, but as soon as he said it, he instantly regretted it. Hojo had nearly died just over an hour ago, now he was asking him where he wanted to be buried.

The master illusionist didn’t seem to mind the question. “I would be so lucky to be buried in a place like this, disciple. But that generally isn’t the fate for Hidden Warriors. While we are integral to the operations of the Jade Realm, at least in the past, our kind has always been viewed with suspicion and severe distrust in some circles.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Arik didn’t press him for any more information on how the School of Illusion buried their graduates.

Soon they were transitioning away from the famous graveyard, starting up a smaller mountain with weathered paths showing evidence of human existence. They reached a summit and Hojo motioned toward the east, to a rim of mountains, several of them reaching through a pocket of gray clouds.

“That’s where we’re going.”

Arik gulped as he took in the towering peaks in the distance. It was going to be quite the climb.

“It will be cold up there, disciple. We’ll keep moving to stay warm.”

“I’m ready.”

For the time being it was a picturesque scene, one that Arik would remember at some point in the future, standing on the summit alongside Hojo, their destiny cast before them. It would be a memory that he would cherish, one that would come to him from time to time.

.Chapter Eight.

“Never forget that the hand of life is fluid. A rigid hand is a dead hand when holding a sword.”

–Combat Master Rai Dalanzad from his battle treaty The Three Rings, Third Edition, Yoshimura Books, Year 1429, Page 11.

Arik Dacre only realized how tired he was once the sun began to set.

His healing power had an effect on his stamina, but he had spent the night in a barn and had a pretty strenuous day, not to mention their encounter with Sengum Minamoto and the terrain, which had grown rockier and more dangerous as they scaled another wall of rock.

They’d used their grappling hooks more than once by this point, Hojo always going first to show Arik how to climb the wall correctly, the disciple less and less worried about falling as he grew comfortable with the practice. The master illusionist had taught him a few things along the way, including which mountain vegetation was good for eating, from mushrooms to certain roots. Hunger wasn’t a problem, nor was hydration, their path bringing them to several streams of snow runoff, the water cold and refreshing. But the journey itself had been strenuous.

Hojo never said anything about Sengum Minamoto as they traveled, Arik wondering more than once what was going through the master illusionist’s mind. Not only that, he continued to try to figure out how Sengum knew where to find them. Maybe it was just a lucky guess. This got him wondering how much of Chimaura was based on sheer luck, the practice already less chi-based than he had anticipated.

“What are we going to do if this old shadow-brother of yours is waiting for us at this village you know of?” Meosa asked, interrupting a spell of silence that had lasted more than an hour.

“Sengum won’t be there.”

Arik figured this was as good of a time as any to ask. “How do you think he tracked us in the first place?”

“We were sloppy.”

“We were?”

Arik remembered hiding the bodies of the men that they had fought between Katano and Moonagwa. They would have been harder to discover than the bodies left on the beach. The disciple paused for a moment, suddenly becoming aware of what he was thinking and how utterly bizarre it was.

Hiding bodies? Killing indiscriminately and without remorse?

These kinds of things would have done something to him in the past, but now it had become a way of life.

This was who he was now, someone who had blurred the line between disciple and illusionist.

“The beach. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. But also in staying at the Hidden Warrior Retreat outside of Moonagwa, our second mistake. I should have known better. A hostel in the outer settlement of the city would have been a better option, and we could have moved in and out more easily. I want you to note where we went wrong, disciple. Even someone who has been doing this for a while, who has an understanding of Chimaura exceeding a normal person’s, and who has spent a life in espionage can still make mistakes. Mistakes are what make us human.”

“Now that’s something I can agree with,” Meosa said with a cackle. “Kami like me? We rarely make mistakes. Well, aside from that mistake I made five hundred years ago that led to me being imprisoned, and a mistake I may be making in leading this merry little band of blathering misfits. Other than those two, I have a pretty good track record.”

“It both behooves and humbles us to get a better picture of who we are,” Hojo told the kami. “We have a few more miles until we reach the village.”

“Does the village have a name?”

“Not to my knowledge. It isn’t really a village, to be honest, it’s just a gathering of families who are nomadic in the spring and fall, and stay near each other in hastily crafted cottages for the summer and winter.”

“No one has named it?”

Hojo shook his head. “Not everything needs a name.”

Meosa grumbled about the statement as they started up a ridge line that revealed the valley beyond, the mountains they were planning to reach at the other end. Many of the rock formations here were shaped like blunt swords, Arik pausing once again to appreciate the beauty of the Jade Realm.

“If they don’t have a name for it, what do people call it?” Meosa asked, his annoyance boiling over. “This village wasn’t here when I was alive. You know what I mean, I’m still alive. But back in my day, anyone who was brave enough, or maybe dumb enough, to visit Sukitoma would bring their own supplies then. If there’s a village, humans would surely name it.”

“I have heard people call it The Village Beneath the Crystal Castle.”

“Sounds like a name to me. The Village Beneath the Crystal Castle.”

“Then I suppose it does have a name,” Hojo told Meosa as he tilted his chin up, a short grin appearing on his face. Arik caught a glint of his eyes, noticing that they didn’t match the smile, a hollowness to them, as if he were looking to a landscape beyond anything Arik could see or imagine.

The master illusionist tilted his head back down and continued on his way, stopping only once to drink from another stream, this one with rocks lining it that had Jadean ideograms carved into them. “Directions,” Hojo told Arik as he motioned to the rocks.

“And prayers.”

“Prayers?” Arik asked Meosa.

“Anyone this far out would benefit from a prayer, disciple. At least that was the thinking then, and it appears to be the thinking now.”

Arik heard a howling in the distance and recognized it instantly. “There are hainu here?” he asked, referring to the winged wolves that had once attacked him outside of his Academy.

“There are. Other things as well,” Hojo said, “which is why it is good we will reach the village before dark.”

“I’ve never been afraid of yokai, and I’m certainly not now. If any of them come around here, I’ll start handing out watery uppercuts like they’re free.”

“I’m sure you will, kami.”

Hojo guided Arik through several rock spires, and from there to an open meadow, the grass up to his knee. Buzzing insects swirled around with every step, butterflies with turquoise wings fluttering in the vicinity. The air seemed thinner, yet it was also invigorating, Arik getting what equated to a second wind.

They neared the Village Beneath the Crystal Castle just as the sun set in the west, from the direction that they had just come.

Arik was ready for anything.

****

Arik assumed that they wouldn’t simply make their way through the Village Beneath the Crystal Castle, not without disguising themselves. He turned out to be right about this. Hojo took a seat with his back to a tree, the sky still slightly orange enough for him to see his reflection in the compact mirror that he carried.

The master illusionist applied dark makeup along his cheeks, and Arik did something similar, using the gray makeup to look gaunter than usual. Hojo instructed Arik to tuck his hair into a bun at the back of his head, and use some of his white paint to add lines to his roots.

“We’re merely wanderers, disciple. I don’t believe anyone will question us, but imagine yourself as someone who crosses the country over the summer looking for work and other opportunities. There are people that do that in the Jade Realm, and this would be about the time that they start their journeys. Imagine their mindset, the way they may eat or drink, especially if they haven’t had food for a number of days. Then imagine them being surrounded by people and not wanting to stand out, eating quickly at first and then slowing down. The desperate look of those trying not to look desperate. Just some things to think about.”

“And don’t forget to let me do the talking,” said Meosa. “I know how to voice a peasant.”

“If we’re lucky, I will be the only one that talks, kami.”

After he was done disguising himself, Hojo showed Arik how to place his sheathed sword beneath his robes and tuck it into the leg of his pants. They used sanjaku cloth to rope the sword above their navels so as not to disrupt the bend of their knees. Hojo then gave him an example of how to walk with a weapon in this way.

“There was a Hidden Warrior named Suri Taisho who once devised a contraption that would allow him to hinge his sword at about the middle point. Sheathing his weapon and tucking it beneath his pants allowed him to move his knee naturally for disguises. Not only that, he could also easily place the blade across his back and fit it into other locations. He died when someone struck the sword in just the right way to bend at the hinge, temporarily disarming him. They kept his head mummified for some time at the School of Illusion outside of Avarga, where I taught, as an example of how not to get too creative.”

Hojo walked with his shoulders hanging down, as if he were bearing the weight of the world on them, the master illusionist affecting a grimace once they encountered people. He shuffled his feet, grunting every now and then as he looked up to find whatever it was he was looking for.

Of course, it’s a tavern, Arik thought once they approached a building with a wooden roof, the largest in the vicinity with several rooms at the back. The ceiling was low and it smelled of meat and ale, the space a bit muggy even though it was starting to cool off.

“Stay here,” Hojo said in a voice that wasn’t his, one that Arik hadn’t heard him use before. He shuffled over to the bartender and spoke. After money was exchanged, and Hojo had a few words with the barmaid, he returned to Arik with the key. “They have one room.”

“Shan’t we have an ale here?” Meosa asked in what Arik assumed was his best peasant voice. “I’m dying of bloody thirst, you old rotten mushroom. Let me quench my thirst, dammit!”

A few of the patrons turned to look at Hojo and Arik.

Hojo left without saying another word, Arik following after him and trying to match the gait of someone who had walked all day, as he had been instructed to do. But then he remembered that he had walked all day. His center of gravity lowered to some degree and his lungs cleared of oxygen.

They reached the room at the back of the hallway, and as soon as they entered Hojo turned to Meosa. “You would be wise to listen to me, kami.”

“What? I was just playing the role.”

Hojo removed his sword from his inner robes and sat on the bed across from Arik.

There was nothing special about the room, and the rug in the center space was threadbare, rubbed to the wood flooring at points. The space was windowless and stuffy, and like the main area of the tavern, the ceilings were low. The only other thing in the room was a table with a drawer beneath it and an old Jadean flag pinned above the door.

“We have to be extra careful now,” Arik said, picking up where Hojo left off. “You should know that.”

“I was being careful. Don’t you two get it? We entered the tavern, you shuffled over to the bartender and spoke quietly, and then we headed to a room at the back. If I were sitting there having an ale, I would find our behavior very suspicious.”

Hojo didn’t answer.

“Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you wonder what those two stiff-legged men were up to? Don’t blame me for improvising a little, making things look natural. Even then, if anyone was actually paying attention to us—which yes, there were a few—they saw me wanting to have a drink or two, and you wanting to go to our room. So there’s some conflict there. It’s a little less suspicious. All I’m trying to say here is I did all of us a favor. You should be thanking me!”

Hojo didn’t thank Meosa. “Tomorrow, we will leave early without breakfast. We can train once we get outside the village. I still want you to practice your One-Count Strike and I think…” Hojo looked down at his weapon, which was in its scabbard on the bed beside him.

Arik had never paid much attention to the master illusionist’s blade, its sheath black, the blade itself with a dullness to it that betrayed just how sharp it was. He had noticed earlier in holding the weapon that the piece had a unique weight to it, and something told him that, like Hojo, there was likely more to the blade than met the eye.

“Yes?” Arik asked after Hojo didn’t finish his sentence. The master illusionist had started to look to the side, as if he’d seen something pass.

“My blade. I would like you to try it with my weapon. This is no ordinary sword.” Hojo stood and walked the weapon over to Arik, which he respectfully handed to him before returning to his bed. “This weapon has been carried by Hidden Warriors of the School of Illusion for hundreds of years. Do you remember the story I once told you about Sorgus de Moonagwa in the five years he spent waiting to kill a corrupt businessman? This sword belonged to his student, Maro Nobisashi. It has been passed down since that time, five hundred years of usage.”

“I… I see.” Arik slowly removed the blade from its scabbard, and understood in that moment how much blood it had seen. He felt something else as he held the weapon. It was as if the Mask of the Fallen, which was tucked away in the front of his robes, was calling for it, not quite vibrating, but definitely aware that he was holding it.

“Tomorrow, I would like you to train with that sword. Now, let’s see the Coro Pache book.”

After Arik returned the sword to its scabbard, he retrieved the book, which he gave to Hojo. They located the image that the fan-like itako had mentioned. Arik now saw where he would place the cylindrical crystal to discover which tomb held the Whispering Sword. He still didn’t quite understand how it worked, but he had increasingly learned with Hojo that a lot of it had to do with trusting the process.

They would eventually get there.

The barmaid brought food to their room about thirty minutes later. The young woman was inquisitive, and immediately began asking Hojo questions about why he was in the area.

“Just looking for work,” he told her in his accent as he chewed on a piece of bread. Arik assumed that the master illusionist would dismiss her, yet he kept talking, truly falling into his role. “Have you heard of anything? Any jobs that my friend and I could perhaps do around here?”

“Around this tavern? No, nothing here. We just hired two extra people because of business.”

“Doing that well, huh?”

The woman swept her brown hair behind her ears and offered Hojo a grim smile. “It’s busier than it was at this time last year, mostly because of people wanting to visit the Crystal Castle. But the guides are all too spooked to take them, so they end up here, and then some of them head back to wherever they came from. I don’t know why people are so interested in that castle. I’ve seen it six or seven times. It’s not like anyone can reach it anyway. That water is real cold. Even in the summer, it’s like ice.”

“Why are the guides spooked about the castle?” Hojo asked.

Arik saw it yet again, something about the way that Hojo was now looking at her, as if he already knew the answer to her question. Arik was certain at that moment he had seen hints of Chimaura at work.

“I don’t believe it, personally. We don’t have things like that here.”

“Things like what?”

“I can’t say. I’ll just let the guides figure it out. There’s no reason to scare off visitors.”

Hojo reached into his pocket and produced some money. The barmaid obediently approached him and took it, her face starting to sag some as if she were being hypnotized.

“They say a gashadokuro is living there now along the lake, at least according to what I’ve heard. But several guides say they saw it. And it’s fast.”

“A gashadokuro? At the Crystal Castle?”

“Uh-huh. Right there on the shoreline. One guide thinks it’s waiting until winter so it can cross.”

“Gashadokuro, eh? Those aren’t supposed to exist,” Meosa said in his peasant accent.

“That’s my thought as well. I think the guides are just being lazy.” The barmaid shrugged. “Will there be anything else?”

“No, that will be all,” Hojo told her.

Once she left, Arik spoke. “What is that exactly? Some kind of yokai?”

“It’s a giant skeletal yokai, my boy,” said Meosa. “Supposedly, the last one alive was killed by Combat Master Justrom Yinzo, before the 800th year.”

Hojo picked at his meal for a moment before he spoke. “I don’t think the guides have any reason to lie considering their livelihood is based on taking people to the glacial lake so they can view the Crystal Castle. In that case, if there is a gashadokuro guarding the lake, we will either have to deal with it, or try to get around it.” The master illusionist focused on Arik. “What do you think it wants, kami? And your friend who lives in the castle, what do you think they would want?”

“Sukitoma? Probably the same thing that I would want—someone to deal with the skeletal yokai preparing to raid my castle come winter. That, or scare off the tourists.”

Hojo took a deep breath in, as if he were settling what he was saying next with himself. “Then, I suppose we will have to see to it. Rest well tonight, disciple. Tomorrow, we encounter a gashadokuro.”

Part Two

.Chapter One.

“Reality brims with the cleansing light of chi, yet the thoughts and actions of all the realms remain clouded.”

–Master Nongrat Eldegai in his book A Healing Mind, Third Edition, Ezochi Revivaura Books, Year 1336, Page 217.

Body-body initiative; striking body…

Arik Dacre felt the power of Hojo’s weapon swell within him as he blocked the master illusionist’s first attack.

Klank!

It was strange how a weapon could take on the properties of its former owners, almost as if Chimaura had been fused directly into the darkened blade. For some strange reason, Arik even felt faster and more dexterous, a sensation that he tried to ignore as they continued.

It’s the sword, he reminded himself. Focus on your form, focus on the One-Count Strike. Do not focus on the sword’s inherent power.

He recalled what it had looked like when Hojo had performed the One-Count Strike technique, the blooming chi around him, and the force that it caused. It was a Thunderaura skill, one that had been adopted by the School of Illusion, which was something that Arik continued to understand about how the mysterious school operated and its learning style. Illusionists liked to borrow.

He was at the point now that he wouldn’t be surprised if Hojo showed him a modified Revivaura technique. There really was no telling with illusionists, especially now, especially after he’d seen Hojo multiply his form using Chimaura…

Arik wore the Mask of the Fallen, and he could see the beam of energy connecting itself to various kill points. He could also feel its power, Hojo insisting that he train with it on.

The master illusionist himself had never worn the mask. He didn’t know what the bloodlust felt like, the urge Arik had while wearing it to deliver death blows, the mask practically screaming for precision and finality.

According to legend, Coro Pache hadn’t been able to utilize the piece for too long, the mask having a poisonous effect on the infamous War Priest. But Coro wasn’t like Arik, a disciple who had spent his life learning how to heal and move past a simple poisoning. Their backgrounds were the biggest difference between the two men, one from the Crimson and the other from the Onyx Realm.

Autumn Leaves Strike; attacking initiative…

Arik switched to a left side stance and brought his blade in a downward arc, stopping the weapon in midair, mere inches away from impact. Hojo glanced down at his wrist and up to the disciple. “Good. Reset. This technique must become part of your skillset.”

Arik grit his teeth and finally let out a short exhale.

Once again, he felt as if the mask had wanted him to do more, to sever the wrist and spin in the other direction, his blade taking Hojo’s head. He could see the movement in his mind’s eye and it troubled him, yet it was important that he trained in this way.

It was important he knew both his power and his limitations.

A confrontation with Nobunaga was on the horizon, and there would be no holding back once it happened, no chance to reset or second guess his movements once the day came that the two were finally able to meet. Arik would need to read his enemy in a moment’s notice, understand his cadence, and strike with an incredible resolve. Not only that, there would be other factors, namely Enenra, the air kami that had joined Nobunaga, who would likely aid the Southern warlord in combat.

But this was something Arik was working on as well…

Meosa flared up and twisted toward Hojo, a tornado of water spinning around him as he rose into the air. He returned to Arik, the master illusionist never getting wet. While Meosa was often cranky and standoffish, the aqueous kami took their training seriously, rarely going with his usual snarky comments, and doing a decent job of not getting Hojo wet.

Arik’s following strikes were augmented by Meosa’s power.

Feeling motivated, feeling as if he could actually pull it off, the disciple stepped back and tried to summon the accumulation of his chi aura into a One-Count Strike. His next movement was amplified in a way that he had never experienced before, like the ground had opened beneath his feet, as if a crack in the soil had ripped toward Hojo.

Did I do it? Arik thought, a sense of elation coming to him as the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention.

Hojo lowered his arms, the tip of his blade now pointed toward the ground as a smile spread across his face. “That’s it, disciple. That is the One-Count Strike, the basis for such an attack. Can you do it again? You must try to do it again!”

“I think I can…”

“Then do it. Like any of the other techniques that you have learned in the future, you will need to be able to execute them in a moment’s notice. There can be no thinking, no hesitation. You can’t obsess over these maneuvers and techniques in your head as I know you do, disciple. There must be a natural cadence to them.”

Arik tilted his chin down.

“That is what you do, correct? You overthink these maneuvers, where you should be starting to feel them naturally push you into action. All these techniques, everything you have learned, needs to be executed with the precision of someone that is fluid with reality. If you are thinking about what you are about to do, you are not fluid. I can guarantee you that someone like Nobunaga, a Crimsonian blade who has studied Thunderaura, finds the usage of the chi-power second nature. You must do the same. You are unique, disciple. You have mastered Revivaura—”

“No, I haven’t. There are two more branches, Sacred and Plenary.”

Meosa scoffed at the statement. “And as far as we know, only one man left in this world knows about them, your instructor, that cursed head priest, who may or may not be working with the enemy. Maybe there are other people in your realm who know about it, but we can’t prove that for the time being.”

“I agree with the kami, and even if there are more, you must operate as if you’re one of the last.”

Hojo knew about Master Guri Yarna.

Not only had Hojo personally met the man once during a lecture, Arik had explained upon reuniting with the master illusionist in Omoto that his instructor was alive. He also told him about what Combat Master Altai had said about the other integral figure in Arik’s life. Even if Nobunaga didn’t agree, according to Altai, Master Nankai, the Crimsonian man who had trained Arik in how to use a blade, was alive.

But he had no idea where to find him.

Two masters had brought Arik up, and by strange circumstance it had been his healing instructor who had betrayed him in the end. While Arik still intended to seek out Master Nankai, for now, that goal would need to be sidelined as he worked toward the Whispering Sword and disrupting Nobunaga’s supply chain.

Hojo continued. “I’m not suggesting you get a big head in what you are able to do, but you do need to recognize what you have achieved. Aside from your healing instructor, you may be the only one left in this world. We don’t know that, we can’t see everything at once. We have no way of knowing if the false shinobi, under the command of Sengum Minamoto and the funding and instruction of Kogu and Nobunaga, were able to kill all disciples such as yourself. But we should operate as such.”

“I… I understand.”

“There may be a point in the future that your healing power, and a technique like the One-Count Strike, become the difference between life and death. Now, try again, disciple. And after that, we will continue to work on it until the point of exhaustion. Then we will see to this gashadokuro.”

“Finally,” Meosa said, coming alive next to Arik. “Our day gets interesting. Not only that, I will be able to introduce the two of you to Sukitoma, a dear friend if there ever was one. I’m sure you two will love him, that is, if he is in one of his better moods.”

“Better moods?” Arik asked.

Meosa shrugged. “He may not be so happy to have visitors.”

****

Hojo and Arik scavenged for food along the way to the glacial lake, the master illusionist showing him more edible plants and roots, teaching the disciple how to recognize them. Not everything around him was consumable in some way, but there were many more than he had anticipated. Arik was surprised at some of the flavors, from spicy mint to the sour zest of mountain rutabaga that grew only on the western side of certain stones.

He used his kunai to prepare a meal for later, Hojo showing Arik the best way to store the food in the leather bag that he carried using the leaves from a prickly shrub. They could always hunt, which was something the master illusionist had suggested once they saw a rabbit bolt away from them, but sometimes that wasn’t necessary.

“Unless you are craving meat, the Jade Realm generally has everything a person could want, aside from the more arid regions toward the southern border.”

“This one is interesting,” Arik told Hojo as he ate a green berry that tasted almost like candy, sugary and sweet, with a fibrous texture.

“My daughter used to like those,” was all Hojo said as they continued on their journey.

They paused to rest several times, Hojo never explicitly telling Arik that this was so they could acclimate to the altitude. He assumed this was the case, and he could feel the difference in his breath now, how his inhales had increased to keep his blood oxygenated. While exhausting, it also felt invigorating to some degree.

“Just another few miles now,” Meosa said, upbeat for once. “There are delicious fish in the lake, you know. The plumpest fish I’ve ever seen. Perhaps I’ll be able to grab a few for you.”

“That would be nice. Fish is always refreshing.”

As they continued, Arik thought back to his breakthrough point in their training earlier.

He had performed a less than adequate version of the One-Count Strike about a dozen times when he slipped forward again, the disciple collapsing to his knees, everything around him going black for a moment. He never fell onto his face, but he came close, Arik aware now of just how much the technique took out of him. This was likely because it drew upon his Revivaura reserves in a strange way, especially as the move required a different fuel source of chi than he had already been cultivating.

Revivaura, Thunderaura, Chimaura, Yokaura…

A growing part of Arik wanted to spend his life mastering them all, even if he didn’t understand two of the concepts all that well. There were times his quest for revenge felt childish, Arik getting this hint that he should move on and focus on improving himself instead. And perhaps he would have had he not seen his sister, the lone hostage taken from the attack on his academy.

The mere fact that Mori Ehara existed changed everything, and even if there was a side of him that wanted to grow his knowledge and become a true master, rescuing his only sibling would need to take precedence.

Just a few days ago, Arik had a notion to turn south and head toward the Crimson Realm, where he could directly take on Nobunaga. He even envisioned tracking the man and springing a trap on him, using what he had already learned from Hojo to aid in the assassination. But he knew this would be in haste, an operation that would likely fail. He wasn’t strong enough yet. It pained him to admit this, but he knew it was the case.

This got Arik thinking aloud: “Would you say that it is a sound illusionist practice to investigate an enemy’s past?” he asked Hojo as they started into a pocket of pine trees.

Meosa laughed bitterly. “What kind of demented question is that? Of course, it is, disciple. It’s all about deception, which is aided by intelligence.”

Hojo didn’t take the same tone as the kami. “I understand what you are asking, and I need to think on it.” It was a few minutes later, after they’d passed through a rocky outcrop, that Hojo spoke again. “Sometimes, being over prepared can produce the same results as being underprepared.”

“So… I shouldn’t want to learn more about Nobunaga.” Arik exhaled audibly. He had never really explored this line of thinking before and hearing himself go through the motions of it was odd. “You’re saying that I shouldn’t want to learn more about Nobunaga’s past and hope that I can exploit it in some way?”

“Not exactly. I’m saying that obsessing over your enemy and knowing them too well can blind you to the immediate task at hand. You absolutely should learn more about Nobunaga’s past. How did he get where he is now? Who has he hurt along the way? Do you see where I’m going with this, disciple? As a young man, there is likely a part of you that would love to charge into his royal court and challenge him right then and there, strike him to the ground. But as someone studying under a former instructor at the School of Illusion, you should know that there are better ways to eliminate your target. Those that he has wronged in the past would be a good place to start. Find them, and you uncover a better, more anonymous way to end his life.”

“What did you mean earlier about being over prepared?”

“Sengum Minamoto. I’ve known that man for as long as you’ve been alive. I know everything about him, and we were in the School of Illusion at the same time. I should know his weaknesses by now, and I do, yet I hesitated to exploit them in our confrontation.”

“Because you used to be friends?”

“That, and because every man has multiple soft spots, even if it doesn’t seem as if they do. My hesitation came in how to stop him, and what would be the best way. If I had killed Sengum right then and there, it may have caused a ripple effect that changed how our upcoming actions on their weapons stockpile would play out. That could change how Nobunaga waged his impending war. Do you see? Do you see what happens if one knows too much? If I had known as much, if I had only understood him as an enemy, or if I had known just enough to truly wound him, it may have changed our destiny for good or bad. Yet I hesitated.”

“So there’s a balance.”

“There always is, disciple.”

The forest melted away, replaced by crags and steep ridges. They reached a crest, and as they did he saw the glacial lake, one that resembled an ocean in the clouds.

That wasn’t all.

Seated before the lake was an enormous skeletal yokai, its bones making Arik think that it must have once been a giant human. The gashadokuro was easily fifteen feet tall, and next to it was a club of sorts fashioned out of a large bone.

Without a word, Hojo started off toward it.

.Chapter Two.

“How much are we not seeing?”

–A School of Illusion maxim attributed to Hidden Warrior Torugan de Avarga.

The gashadokuro’s shadow was enormous, the skeletal yokai in epaulets that were connected via a leather strap to each other, which dangled almost like a necklace. As Arik had noticed previously, the yokai had an enormous bone club with it, which was currently held in its left hand, the piece clearly a femur now that Arik could get a better look at it.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Meosa asked Hojo, who continued to walk toward the gashadokuro as if they were the same size. Everything about Hojo’s behavior had thrown Arik off. He assumed that they would try to do something like wait for night and sneak up on it. The glacial lake itself stretched for what looked like a mile; they could easily go around the yokai and use Meosa’s power to cross through to the center.

There was another thing that Arik saw as they approached the skeletal yokai.

In the center of the lake, on a rock that jutted out of the water, was a castle five or six stories high, completely made of crystal, its base running at least thirty yards across.

The Crystal Castle…

All of it, the towering skeletal yokai and the glimmering castle beyond, was unlike anything Arik had ever seen before, to the point that it was hard to be on guard, especially as he didn’t know what Hojo was planning. From what he could tell, it seemed like the master illusionist wanted to ask the yokai what it was doing along the shoreline. But Hojo also had his sword drawn, and although it was subtle, there was a hint of agitation to the way he moved, as if he were ready to attack the gashadokuro.

The enormous skeleton only noticed them after they came over a bank, Arik now wearing the Mask of the Fallen, his hand on the grip of his weapon. He hadn’t drawn his sword just yet, but was prepared to at a moment’s notice.

“What is the meaning of this?” Hojo asked with the confidence of a man twice as tall as the yokai. “Found a good place to rest, yokai? Are you comfortable there?”

A rumbling started up, the skeletal being’s voice seeming to exist all around Arik, to the point that it felt as if it had infiltrated his senses. The voice was neither male nor female, something in between, but it was exceptionally deep. “Why have you come here?”

Hojo took a casual look around. “I should ask you the same. Humans visit this lake during the summer to see the castle. Itako and the like use this place for worship and practice. There have been reports that you are actively preventing tourism, spiritual and otherwise. Now, I don’t personally care if my brethren see the Crystal Castle or not, even if I do believe it is an important spiritual trip for an itako to take, but we have business there, and I’m letting you know now that we will be visiting the Crystal Castle, Sukitoma in particular.”

The gashadokuro considered this, the blank expression on its face making it hard for Arik to know what it was thinking. Finally, it spoke again. “I have no problem with you visiting the Crystal Castle, but you will have to challenge me first.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I’ve grown bored. Because there’s no one like me left in this world as far as I know. Because you may be a fun challenge, an illusionist.”

“Do you have some particular attachment to this castle? Or Sukitoma?” This question came from Meosa, who now floated next to Arik, his water form slightly visible.

“Ah, a kami. It has been ages since I’ve met someone like you,” said the yokai, no hint of surprise in its voice upon seeing Meosa’s watery form.

“Ages? Sukitoma is a kami. You have met him, have you not?”

“We are very much alike, unique in our own way.”

“You and I?”

“Yes.”

“No, we’re not, and I should be insulted that you would even mention such a thing. I’m a powerful water kami and you’re a bag of bones. Need I elaborate any further?”

“Meosa…” Arik hissed.

“What? It’s true. Look, big guy, either get out of our way, or I will use the water from the lake to bury you in the sand below. It may not kill you, but I will be able to send you deeper into the soil than you have ever been before. In maybe a thousand years, if this lake ever dries up, someone will discover your bones and wonder how you got all the way down there.”

The gashadokuro seemingly shrugged off this statement, its voice remaining calm. “What is your name, kami?”

“Meosa.”

“If you would step aside, Meosa, I would like to challenge the illusionist here. If he can beat me, and by beat I mean bring me to the ground, then I will let you pass. Not only that, I will owe you a favor. You have journeyed here for a reason, have you not?”

“Yes, we have. To see Sukitoma, an old friend of mine. We need something from him, not that this is any of your business.”

The gashadokuro nodded. “And I’m assuming that whatever it is you need from Sukitoma will help you do whatever it is you plan to do next, correct?”

“That is generally how these things work, yes,” Meosa told the skeletal yokai, agitation now in his voice.

“In that case, if you best me, I will help you accomplish whatever it is you need to accomplish next. In fact, both of you can try, both humans. But not you,” it said as it motioned the tip of its weapon toward Meosa. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

“Two humans against a gargantuan yokai? How do you know we’d even need your help in whatever we do next?” Meosa asked the yokai. “You assume we are just wandering around like a pair of malodorous gaki looking for our next meal.”

“We accept your challenge,” Hojo said, surprising Arik.

Why would Hojo agree to this? Arik thought, an answer coming to him instantly, one that may not have appeared as suddenly had he not spent so much time training with the master illusionist. Because we could use the help of the yokai in the future, once we destroy the supply chain. That has to be why.

With this in mind, Arik drew his sword, his knees wobbling for a split second as he held onto the blade with both hands. What kind of stance should one take when they plan to fight an opponent three times their size? Where would he even strike to begin with?

The answer to the second question came to him as soon as his blade was secure in his hands. A faint red beam now connected the tip of his sword to the yokai’s ankle bone.

All we have to do is bring it down, Arik reminded himself as he moved into position next to Hojo. How hard can this be?

****

Hojo was the first to move on the offensive against the gashadokuro, showcasing a bravery that Arik didn’t quite have at the moment, the disciple spooked by the size of their opponent. Even with the Mask of the Fallen showing him where to strike, he still hesitated to take a step toward the yokai.

He imagined the blunt force trauma of getting struck by its femur club, and what it would take to heal from an injury like that, one in which his bones and internal organs could easily be crushed. There was another reason he stayed back, one not tied to fear of the impending fight—if something happened to Hojo, Arik would need to be there to heal him.

With this in mind, he watched as Hojo lightly pressed through the sand, the master illusionist’s sword at the ready as the skeletal yokai swung its club at him. Arik gasped as Hojo batted the club away as if it were a blade of normal size, his eyes growing in size as he realized what Hojo had done.

One-Count Strike. It has to be!

Arik knew he wasn’t ready to attempt this maneuver yet, but if he could perhaps distract the yokai, maybe Hojo could land the finishing blow, at least one strong enough to bring the gashadokuro to its knees.

“Go for the ankles,” Arik said as he briefly passed behind Hojo, the disciple lightly touching Hojo’s back and letting him know of his presence.

The master illusionist grunted a response and changed the way he was holding his weapon.

Whomph!

The gashadokuro smashed its club into the ground right where Arik had just been standing, the disciple feeling the sand as it sprayed into the air and landed, as everything shook around him.

I have to get its attention, he thought as he once again tried to run closer to it and then backpedal to some degree, the skeletal yokai turning its focus to him.

Rather than strike the ground this time, the yokai went for a horizontal slash, Arik diving onto his stomach to avoid being struck. Arik rolled out of the way, back to his feet, much calmer than he should have been considering he’d nearly been knocked all the way to Iga just moments ago. His adrenaline raced, his heart rushing to circulate blood to his extremities as he got his bearings.

We can do this.

The words echoed deep within his psyche.

(We can do this…)

Arik knew his role in this skirmish, and that there may be another way to bring down the gashadokuro now that he had seen its two basic modes of attack. The towering yokai could strike the ground, and it could swing its femur club horizontally. Not to mention its sheer size and density of its bones. But it seemed like the yokai was a bit off balance, that its weapon affected its center of gravity.

And Arik wasn’t the only one who had picked up on this.

Rather than go for the striking point that the Mask of the Fallen had picked out, Hojo began to backpedal, the yokai gearing up for another horizontal attack.

Arik ran after the tip of its club as it missed Hojo, causing the gashadokuro to immediately try to swing it toward him. He had to dive closer to the yokai this time to avoid its attack, their opponent trying to compensate for his proximity.

Its next failed strike caused the gashadokuro to hunch over, the yokai losing its balance. It fell, and as it did Meosa laughed, water spewing out of his mouth. “Talk about the balance of a bloated yamachichi, ha!”

“That’s… that’s fair,” the gashadokuro said as it slowly began to pick itself up. “My name is Basha, and it appears… it appears that I now owe the three of you a favor.”

****

Basha sat along the shoreline for a moment, its big skeletal finger flicking the sand as if it were experiencing melancholy. “I must admit, I’m a little embarrassed.”

Hojo returned his sword to its scabbard and approached the giant yokai. “There is nothing to be embarrassed about. Losing one’s balance is an experience we all must share.”

“But to lose so quickly…”

“It is fine; you did well. A normal person would have been terrified. We are not normal people.” Hojo glanced at Arik, the master illusionist tilting his chin up so a bit of light cut across his face. He still carried a serious expression, but there was a hint of relief to it. Things could have turned out way worse than they did. That much was clear in his facial expression.

“Why were you guarding the shoreline anyway?” Arik asked once neither Hojo nor Basha said anything.

“Sukitoma asked me to. He has grown tired of the tourists visiting every summer and leaving their trash along the shoreline. Do you see how clean it is right now?” Basha lifted its hand and motioned to the right. “According to Sukitoma, it would be filled with everything from discarded blankets to food scraps by this point in the summer. The poor fellow spends much of the fall cleaning it up and doesn’t want to do it anymore. So he asked me to scare off any humans that visited.”

“Sukitoma is an old friend of mine. He would want to see me. By preventing our passage with this mindless challenge of yours, you’ve made an already terrible day worse.”

“You’ve had a bad day?” Basha asked Meosa.

“Not really. But yesterday was pretty bad.”

Basha settled its soulless gaze on Meosa. It was becoming increasingly clear to Arik that the skeletal giant was soft-spoken. He sensed that it had a kind spirit.

“You know, it isn’t often that I encounter a kami.”

“Are you losing your memory? We’ve been over this already, Sukitoma is a bloody kami, just like me but different, so not just like me but just like me enough for us to be similar. I apologize if that statement was exhausting. And for the record, you don’t owe us anything. That was hardly a challenge, even by human standards.”

“No,” Hojo said, cutting Meosa off. “An agreement is an agreement. And there is something that we could use your help for in the future.”

Basha turned its neck to Hojo, a cracking sound reaching Arik’s ears. “Oh?”

“Yes, because of the nature of your size and how humans likely react to seeing you. I’m assuming you don’t know much about the politics of Taomoni at the moment. If you do, then we can skip over that part.”

“No, you’re right, illusionist.”

“Hojo, you may call me Hojo, if you prefer. And this is Arik Dacre.”

“A northern name,” Basha said as it tilted its chin to Arik. “There’s something different about you.”

Arik removed the Mask of the Fallen and tucked it into the front of his robes. “I’m not an illusionist; I’m a disciple from the Academy of Healing Arts. At least, I was. The Academy has been destroyed.”

“Destroyed?”

Hojo took over from here. “The Crimson Realm is in the process of invading the Onyx Realm. As you very well know, the Jade Realm is between the two, meaning it has created a perfect environment for the transport of weapons and hiring of mercenaries. The warlord that leads the Crimson Realm, Nobunaga, has already destroyed the academies in the north. The healers were slaughtered, and as far as we know, there are only two healers still living. Arik, and his former instructor, who is working directly with Nobunaga now.”

“This is very bad to hear. If a war takes place between the North and the South it will start in the Jade Realm as it has in the past. It will fester.”

“Perhaps, and I agree with the festering part. My best guess would be that it eventually starts on the border between the Onyx Realm and the Jade Realm, maybe near Austere.” Hojo paused for a moment. “I do not know if it is within our capacity to stop the war or not, and Arik and I have different perspectives on the best way to prevent the Crimson Realm from advancing.”

“If Nobunaga dies, the Crimson Realm will naturally fall back.”

“Oh?” Basha considered what Arik had said for a moment as it continued to swirl its skeletal finger through the sand. “That isn’t always the case, disciple. There is always a person waiting to step up. But killing this Nobunaga fellow would certainly thwart their advance, and if the person that steps up doesn’t have the same charisma, it might stop the impending war entirely. What is your perspective on that, illusionist?”

“I don’t disagree with that, but I don’t know how easy it will be to get to Nobunaga,” said Hojo. “My perspective is starting with armaments that are being built up outside of Iga, in the Valleys of the Unknowns. I would like your help in disrupting the supply chain.”

“Not a pleasant place, the Valleys of the Unknowns.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“For someone to build armaments up in the Jade Realm, they would have to be working with someone on the inside,” said Basha.

Hojo nodded. “That is exactly what is happening, and after we do what it is we are planning to do here, we will see what we can do to thwart the buildup of those armaments. The problem is there are just the three of us, so your offer to owe us a favor is very enticing to me.”

“I can see why you agreed to the challenge, illusionist.”

“Now you understand why we could use your help.”

“What about Sukitoma? What do you need from him?”

Hojo motioned to Arik as he quickly explained the other reason they had been in this region, how they learned that a cylindrical crystal would help them interpret an image in a book he had, which they hoped would lead to the Whispering Sword.

“The Whispering Sword, yes. I have heard of that weapon. And it would be you who wields it?”

Hojo shook his head. “It would be him.”

“You have the mask, and you’re looking for the sword. You aren’t a reincarnation of Coro Pache, are you?”

Meosa laughed at Basha’s remark. “I thought the same thing, but Coro and Arik have their differences, namely in stubbornness.”

“Well, I find all this very exciting. But if I’m going to help you, I will have to get permission from Sukitoma to leave the lake. He may not want that, especially during tourist season.”

“Sukitoma’s permission? Bah! Don’t you worry about that part. Sukitoma and I are a pair of kami that go way back. He’ll agree, trust me. And he can go one more harvest season with a dirty beach. It’s not like he has anything else to do aside from clean it up once autumn comes.” Meosa shifted toward the Crystal Castle. “He never leaves that place.”

“In that case, I guess you should go to him now. We can continue our dialogue after he has made his decision. I will be here.” Basha got to its feet. The enormous yokai lifted its femur club and rested it over one of its shoulders. “It has been nice speaking to the three of you. I enjoyed your company, even if it was brief and humiliating on my part.”

.Chapter Three.

“Become your enemy so you can better understand their strengths. Feel the whole world is against you, and act accordingly.”

–Combat Master Baldree Yamanouchi, as told to his biographer for the Crimson-Onyx Shroud War memoir A Year of Slaughter, Year 1087.

Arik felt as if he were running on water, yet his feet never touched the surface of the glacial lake. Meosa also carried Hojo, who stood in a relaxed way, his head slightly tilted down as if this kind of movement was something he was accustomed to. They reached the outer walls of the Crystal Castle, Meosa’s form ballooning in size until it was much larger than Basha, who had remained on the shoreline.

“Sukitoma, let down the drawbridge or I’m coming over the wall. I know you must have been watching. What else is there to do in this blasted castle of yours? Open up!”

For a moment, Arik thought they were going to have to scale the glimmering wall, but then the drawbridge began to lower, no sound associated with the mechanical procedure. The crystal drawbridge lowered and Arik and Hojo were safely set onto it, Meosa taking a smaller, yet thicker form between the two of them.

“Don’t be shy…” Meosa waited for some kind of response, and once it didn’t come, he motioned for Arik and Hojo to follow him in. “Sukitoma is a good fellow, believe me. At least he was, five hundred years ago. Who knows what five hundred years of being treated like a zoo animal has done to him?”

Being inside the walls of the Crystal Castle was an otherworldly experience. Arik and Hojo stepped into a grand entryway, with a texture that matched what it would resemble in the real world. The ground was slightly coarse like it was made of curated stone, the walls slick and polished complete with visible veins, as if they were marble. Even stranger was how the light came through the walls, a kaleidoscopic effect in certain corners, much of it concentrated into a single beam, where an entity made of crystal now stood.

“Look what the tanuki has dug up!”

“Sukitoma!” Meosa moved forward and hugged the crystal kami.

“I haven’t been this wet in ages,” Sukitoma joked as he shook the water off of his crystalline arms.

The kami’s body was fashioned into that of a short man, no taller than four feet, extremely thin yet muscled. A crystal cloak covered Sukitoma’s shoulders and his crystal pants seemed expertly tailored, his feet bare. His liquid blue hair was cut short and parted down one of the sides. When he spoke, the color of his face morphed into something that bordered on turquoise. “I see you have brought guests.”

“These two? Eh, it’s a long story. They may look a little rough around the edges, but I assure you, they are decent enough humans.”

“A long story, huh? Well, I don’t know about you, but I have all the time in the world. Shall we discuss it over a meal?”

“Neither of us need to eat,” Meosa told Sukitoma, both of them chuckling at the statement.

“Yes, but humans find it a necessity. Pluck a few fish from the lake, will you? I’ll meet you in the kitchen. The illusionist likely knows how to prepare raw fish. Is that the case?”

“It has been a while, but it is something I know how to do, yes,” Hojo assured Sukitoma.

“Great, then join me. I’ll see you in a few minutes,” he told Meosa, who was already starting to leave through the open drawbridge.

Sukitoma led Hojo and Arik to a dining room, one marked by a long table with crystal chandeliers hanging over it. “Please, sit. I will return with the knives that you will need to filet the fish.”

“I have kunai.”

“Do you, now? In that case, let’s see it. And we will find out which one is sharper.”

Hojo produced one of the throwing daggers and carefully set it on the crystalline table. Approaching it, Sukitoma placed a single finger next to the dagger. As he did, Arik heard a crackling sound. A clump of crystal appeared and shaped into an exact replica of the kunai.

“Well, what do you think?”

Hojo respectfully examined what Sukitoma had created. “It is a masterwork.”

Sukitoma laughed in a joyful way. “I’ve been at this for quite some time, illusionist. And dare I say… master illusionist? No, it can’t be. You are a Hidden Warrior, are you not?”

“What gave it away?” Arik asked, realizing after these words left his lips that they sounded more like something Meosa would have asked.  Maybe he really is starting to rub off on me.

“Something about the way that he holds himself.”

“I was once a Hidden Warrior, yes. I don’t consider myself one now.’

“Nonsense. You never forget a training like that and you know it. I can’t tell you how long it has been since I met a Hidden Warrior.”

“You may call me Hojo.”

“Hojo, yes, short and to the point. No flowery words needed. As you already know, I am Sukitoma. And you… what is your name?”

“Arik Dacre.”

“A northerner becoming an illusionist? What are the odds? Generally, northerners only dabble in Revivaura.”

“I am a disciple.”

“Ah, yes, that’s what it is. I knew there was something different about you. You don’t hold yourself the same way as someone from the Jade Realm. What odd bedfellows, truly. A water kami that I haven’t seen in five hundred years, a Hidden Warrior, and a northern disciple. If someone had told me that the three of you would be the first visitors I would have this summer, I would have told them they needed to lay off the ale. Yet here the three of you are, well, two of you, anyway. What a joy!”

“Don’t believe anything he says.” Meosa joked as he entered the dining room, the kami levitating a sphere of water. Three large fish twisted back around one another within the sphere, confused. “I hope three fish is enough.”

“It is plenty,” Hojo said. “Thank you, kami.”

“Good. Then you can prepare them while I catch Sukitoma up.”

The crystal kami took a seat at the opposite end of the table. “Yes,” he said as he placed his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his fists. “I must say, Meosa, I am very curious about your sudden appearance and your current company. I look forward to hearing your tale.”

****

Eating fish raw wasn’t something that Arik had done before. Most of the meals in the Onyx Realm centered around hardier things, even close to the coasts, where sea carp and seafood stews were popular. It was a different experience entirely, one augmented by the fact that he was eating the fish raw in a dining room made completely out of crystal, Meosa doing most of the talking at this point as he caught Sukitoma up.

“What a story,” the crystal kami said once Meosa more or less finished his explanation. “What a story! And it was all random, that’s what I like most about it. Truly, by the fates! It is amazing how these random occurrences can go on to change our lives. Had you simply tried to hide in any other cave, you would have never met Meosa. Had you visited Omoto at a different time, you would have never met Hojo. Where would that lead you now? Where would a wayward disciple be without his friends? How different would your journey have been without my dear old friend helping you along the way?”

Wayward? Arik smiled at Sukitoma. “It would have been different, I’ll say that.”

For the most part, Arik got along with Meosa, but there were several decisions he made that were entirely his own, and while he appreciated the kami’s guidance, he knew that Meosa had his own motives as well. But the crystal kami was right in the end, things would have been very different had he not met Meosa, or Hojo for that matter, both occurrences seemingly random yet miraculous in their own ways.

“You really are special, you know that. Unique. Both of you are,” Sukitoma said, motioning from Arik to Hojo, who was carefully cutting another piece of fish.

“Yes, they are special in their own ways, for humans, at least.”

Arik waited for Meosa to follow that up with a snide remark, but it never came.

“What about you?” Hojo finished his piece of fish and looked up at Sukitoma. “What is your story? Why are you in the same castle five hundred years later?”

The kami gestured around. “It is a grand castle, isn’t it? But, that is a fair question. I’m here because it is difficult to move. Not physically, just emotionally. What can I say? I’m attached to the place. I have lived here for some time and aside from the tourists, which I have dealt with through Basha—”

“Let’s put a pin in that,” said Meosa. “Go on.”

“Aside from the tourists and crazed itako, I have memories here. Plus, it is convenient for me. Seeing the sun rise and set every day, its reflection on the surface of the water and the inner and outer walls of the castle I have built. There is nothing like it. This evening, and tomorrow morning, I would ask that you join me on the rooftop. You will see what I mean. The mountains and the water all around me, the light reflecting off the water and from my crystal. It is a true pleasure, a view that never grows old.”

We’re staying here tonight? Arik thought as he looked at Hojo. The master illusionist seemed to interpret what he was thinking, and offered Arik a short, subtle nod. Hojo gave Arik a sliver of fish, using the crystal kunai as a serving utensil. Arik ate it, noticing yet again that it was slimy and cold.

“So routine and habit have replaced your desire for change, or to see something new.”

“I suppose one could put it that way, illusionist. Unlike a human, I could very well be alive for several thousand years. So perhaps my perspective on the passage of time is different. Even if I only lived a thousand years, as I’m reaching now, it would be different than the lifespan of someone like you. And please, take no offense by me saying this—it is merely an observation.”

“A good observation at that. You are right, I haven’t considered lifespan differences and how those would change the nature of habit and routine. I will think on it. Thank you.”

“You never said something like that to me,” Meosa told Hojo. “And I’m fairly certain you’ve never really thanked me. I am old as well, not as old as Sukitoma here, but…”

The crystal kami laughed, hearty and genuine, one of an entity that truly enjoyed itself in the company of others. This made Arik wonder why he had decided to run tourists off, why Sukitoma hadn’t just embraced them and gone down to the shoreline to visit. He went ahead and asked this question, the answer making instant sense considering how long Sukitoma had been alive.

“In the early years, I found the tourists interesting; even in the first one hundred or so years I didn’t mind the occasional visitor or an itako. I still don’t actually mind the itako, but it is the villagers and fishermen and sightseers that disturb the ecosystem here. Itakos generally leave no trace, even if their rituals are a bit… unorthodox. As I was saying, the first hundred years or so were fine, but it does start to agitate you after seeing the same faces year after year coupled with their destructive habits. So that is why. Basha visited during the winter—he generally only travels at certain times and the winter season is one of the better times for him to travel—and I asked him to stick around.”

So it is a male skeleton, Arik thought. He knew there were differences between a male and female skeleton, which was something he had studied at the Academy of Healing Arts. Yet there had been too much activity with the yokai to really get a sense of any pelvic differences due to Basha’s sheer size.

Hojo handed the disciple another piece of fish. “We will be borrowing Basha temporarily, our apologies in advance.”

“Is that so? Did he challenge you?”

“He did.”

Once again, Sukitoma laughed. “Of course, Basha did. And I expect he will honor his pledge. He is loyal to a fault. Although, I’m surprised he didn’t get confused as to how his newfound pledge would conflict with the pledge he made to me, to stay here over the summer.”

“Come on, you don’t need him…”

“Perhaps you are right,” Sukitoma told Meosa. “But I will base that decision on what you need from Basha. Do tell.”

Meosa motioned his watery hand toward Hojo. “Well, it is your idea.”

Hojo offered the crystal kami a similar explanation that he had given Basha about the impending war, and disrupting a supply chain running to the Valleys of the Unknown.

“Yes, he would be good for that. It would excite him. It would excite me, but I won’t be leaving this castle. So that is what you came here for? For Basha?”

“We came here for this.” Arik set the Coro Pache biography on the table and opened to the page in question. “An itako told us that this was a type of art that would reveal an image if a crystal cylinder is placed atop the artwork. It would be placed right here.” He showed Sukitoma the scattered image.

“A puzzle? How fascinating. And all you need is a cylinder of crystal?”

“That’s what she said, yes.”

“It’s called anamorphic art,” Hojo said. “Hidden Warriors of the past used it, at least according to some of our oral traditions.”

“And all you need is a cylinder made of crystal?”

Both Hojo and Arik nodded.

“Then a cylinder you shall have.” Sukitoma once again pressed a finger against the table and produced a cylinder of crystal that was about five inches tall and two and a half inches wide. He joined Arik now, the crystal kami standing next to him as the disciple placed the cylinder on the page.

“I see how it works,” Hojo said, the master illusionist now bent forward, squinting at the crystal as well.

Arik had to change positions, but as he did he saw the scattered image reflecting onto the cylindrical crystal, producing a very distinct tomb in the reflection, with a circular grave marker on top of it. He didn’t remember seeing it back at the graveyard, but with the cylinder and the book, they would be able to find it.

“That is where the Whispering Sword is,” Arik said. “We just need to get it now.”

“How very exciting!” Sukitoma returned to his seat and smiled at the three of them, the kami leaving the cylindrical crystal behind. “I am so overwhelmingly excited for your journey. Please, finish your fish and then let’s head to the rooftop. Let’s enjoy the sunset together.”

****

While memories of what happened that fateful night at the Academy still troubled Arik, there were moments after that were genuinely agreeable, experiences that had since shaped him and opened up his eyes to a world much bigger than anything he could have ever imagined.

Sitting on the roof of the Crystal Castle that evening and watching the sunset over the water was one of those experiences. The conversation was kept to a minimum, the beauty of their world something that Arik wished more people understood. The three realms had spent the entirety of their existence at war with one another in some way, be it through diplomatic channels or an all-out slaughter. Yet there was good in what humans had been able to do, their understanding of chi proof of their limited mastery over their world and how much they had in common, not to mention the sheer beauty of their world.

What Arik was currently experiencing, speaking with two kami atop a crystal castle, was made possible by a different kind of chi entirely.

Yokaura…

It was starting to make sense to him, how yokai and kami were able to use chi or consist entirely of chi. Humans had cultivated it in ways that best benefited them, combat, healing, and trickery. Yokai, who had existed long before humans, used the power in ways that benefited them, at least the more powerful type of yokai, the kami.

It’s all connected…

Arik went to sleep in one of the crystal rooms of a south-facing tower that night with this on his mind.

(It’s all connected.)

His room was neither warm nor cold, and there was nothing comfortable about resting on a slab of crystal. Still, he slept well.

No dreams, no nightmares.

****

Arik was up at about the same time as Hojo to watch the sunrise from the rooftop that following morning.

“What about training for today?” he asked, still feeling a bit sleepy.

“Later,” the master illusionist told him. “We will be switching our rest schedules again as we seek to disrupt the supply chain outside Iga. This is something that is best done at night.”

“After we get the Whispering Sword.”

“Yes, after. If we leave now we will reach Moonagwa by noon. We’re going to have to be careful there yet again. Sengum Minamoto may have moved on, but even if he did, he would have left scouts behind.”

“Yesterday, when we were fighting Basha, you used the One-Count Strike, right? We never were able to discuss your tactics afterward, but I assume that’s how you were attacking him.”

Hojo, who yet again wore his conical hat, offered Arik a tight nod. “That is correct. I don’t expect us to be encountering many yokai of his size, but if we do, if there are still any out there, that would be one way to utilize that technique. Can you think of another way?”

“When fighting multiple combatants.”

“Correct. You are engaging one, and there are one or more on the periphery, waiting to jump. Using the One-Count Strike correctly would blow them back. You can chain this into a combination with the Autumn Leaves Strike, disarming your first challenger, and following up by forcing whoever is left backward. Once you have a better understanding of it, you can work to chain these powers together, not to mention using Meosa to augment your strikes. Remember what I told you: if you are still at the point that you are thinking too hard about combat, where you are naming your attacks before you utilize them, it would be good to start training yourself to do things more naturally.”

“It helps me.”

“Yes, as it should. I will keep saying this, disciple, and one day, perhaps after I have passed, it will finally register with you: be more like your understanding of Revivaura. Be fluid-like, be a natural companion to Meosa.”

Normally, Meosa would have chimed in at this point, but the water spirit was below, still catching up with Sukitoma. Thinking back, Arik could have sworn he had heard them all night, their laughter and voices echoing through the crystal castle. He never could make out what they were saying, but it was clear that they were true friends.

An hour later, Arik and Hojo stepped out onto the drawbridge, Meosa now joining them, Sukitoma standing behind the three, the crystalline kami with his hands behind his back, and what resembled a sad smile on his face.

“Do visit again,” Sukitoma finally said, a hint of melancholy to his voice now. “And try to make it sooner than five hundred years from now.”

“We would like that, thank you,” Meosa told him.

“And one more thing. Illusionist, do not worry. When the time comes, you will know.”

Arik paused. What did Sukitoma mean? Had Hojo stayed up with them last night? He glanced at the master illusionist, trying to decipher the meaning of what Sukitoma had said on Hojo’s face.

As usual, it was a blank slate, one bathed in shadow, and crosscut by a hint of light. “I will keep that in mind, kami.”

.Chapter Four.

“A clever man imposes his will on those who oppose him without them knowing.”

–Madame Noll Arimask in her Scroll on Better Order, later published in the Jadean Book of Proverbs, Year 1475.

Just as Hojo had said, they reached the outskirts of Moonagwa around midday, streaks of gray cutting through the sky above, the sun visible in strips. Both Hojo and Meosa had said that it would rain. Arik was not at all surprised when a light shower started up, mist-like and constantly creating tiny rainbows whenever the light cut through it.

A mystical rain if ever there was one.

Under the cover of a tree, Arik watched as Hojo rearranged his robes and put on the face of a beggar, the master illusionist now wearing his conical hat beneath his clothing and slightly behind his shoulder, to give himself an odd hunch.

His hair already had a silver hue to it, yet he added the white oshiroi paint to heighten this aspect. To accentuate this, Hojo found a bit of ash in an abandoned fire not far from the tree and applied this to his face, mixing it with the gray ink that the shinobi used called usuzumi.

“The trick for these particular elements is to apply them in lines first and then mix them to balance it out.” He showed Arik what he meant on his face. To finish his disguise, Hojo took out a stone pencil, the same that he had given Arik. “As you may recall, the pencils are poisonous. Swallowing it will kill a man within an hour. It is so poisonous, in fact, that it can cause swelling. Watch.”

Hojo ran the stone pencil along his gums and the inside of his right cheek. His right cheek instantly swelled, changing his speech pattern to some degree, as if he had something large in his mouth. “See?”

“How long does it last?” Arik asked.

“It lasts for about an hour. I would suggest using it sparingly. There have been some illusionists that poison themselves slowly over time by doing this too often.”

Meosa started to laugh. “You look like a squirrel trying to hide an apricot seed.”

“It works, doesn’t it?”

Arik took a moment to ruffle his robes and prepare his beggar disguise, the disciple using his haori cape to cover his head. He applied ash and some of the gray paint to his face and under his eyes, making him look exhausted.

“If we were going into town, we would likely need to further our disguises. Perhaps I would have you break a few bones that you can heal later. But it is my feeling that we won’t have much trouble at the graveyard.”

And with those words, Hojo became the beggar, his movement much slower than it had been, a bulkiness about his form, the master illusionist accentuating the hunch on his shoulder by dragging his foot. As they walked, he continued to speak to the disciple about using disguises as a form of deception. “You want to be wretched enough that people don’t want to look at you. That is the goal here,” Hojo said in a voice that was no longer his. “People don’t like seeing disturbing things. Remember what I have told you in the past; think of yourself as a mirror to an inauspicious future to those who look at you. The poor, the malnourished, the desolate, the sad—you are all of these things. Be that way, and no one will want anything to do with you.”

As they started on a path that circled around the earth and walls of Moonagwa, Hojo and Arik encountered several different people, from a burly man carrying hides on his shoulder to an aristocratic woman out for a stroll, a guard not far from her. No one looked at them. No one noticed the disciple and the master illusionist, not to mention the aqueous kami, as they neared the graveyard.

Arik felt that it was only a matter of time now before he had the Whispering Sword.

****

Arik and Hojo ignored the two sellers at the Mourning Courtyard, the one that had sold Hojo his conical hat absent that day. They headed downhill toward the tombs, and once they were out of sight of the two merchants, Arik opened the Coro Pache book. He placed the cylindrical crystal on the piece of paper. Hojo blocked the sun to some degree, and they were able to catch a glimpse of the tomb in the crystal’s reflection, a quick reminder of what they were looking for.

They began their search, Arik and Hojo walking together row after row, looking for a tomb that had a gated entrance, which wasn’t unusual for the nicer area of the graveyard. The one thing that seemed to set it apart, at least according to the reflected image, was a looped design used as a head marker above the entrance to the tomb. It should have easily stood out, but many of the tombs had these sorts of markers, some with small stone statues on top.

They only passed one other person as they walked, a woman with incense sticks tucked between her fingers. From what Arik could tell, she was some sort of itako, based on the way that she was dressed and her overall movement, like she was slowly waving a flag at the tombs. She paid little attention to the two of them, and once she was gone, Meosa spoke.

“Whatever she was doing, I’ll have no part in it.”

“Why is that?” Arik asked.

“That’s one of the shamans that believe they can talk to the dead, a bone itako. I’ve seen them before, the way their robes are cut. Didn’t you see the fringe on the bottom of her robes, disciple? The yellow pattern along her cuffs? She belongs to an ancient sect of crazies, just as the supposed illusionist.”

Arik glanced back to see the woman but didn’t spot her.

“I found it.”

Arik’s attention shifted to Hojo, the master illusionist now standing before a gate, the head marker the same from the crystal’s reflection. The tomb wasn’t as large as the others, no double doors or anything flashy. No family markings, and no small carvings outside of it.

There was nothing in the small space from the gate to the tomb to indicate that a family was paying their respects, or that it was currently being kept up. Perhaps this would have set it apart from the others in the vicinity, but Arik had noticed while they were looking around that there were several tombs that were starting to look shabby.

The more Arik examined it, the more he realized that there was actually nothing remarkable about it aside from it being a tomb. If it weren’t for the marker, it would have blended in so well that they wouldn’t have been able to find it. They were lucky in that regard, especially as portions of the loop had been chipped. If a few more years had passed, it might have weathered away altogether.

Hojo produced something from his shinobi tools to unlock the gate.

“He would make an excellent thief, wouldn’t he?” Meosa asked once Hojo had opened the gate and stepped aside, motioning for Arik to enter. Arik approached the door of the tomb to find that it was made of solid stone, no indication of how it would be opened.

“I think it’s sealed,” he said after he ran his hand along the outer rim of where the door should theoretically separate from the tomb itself. There was no air coming through, and it didn’t seem like it moved.

Hojo began lightly knocking on it, trying to find a hollow spot.

“Let me take a look.” Meosa flared up and shifted into the solid piece of stone. The kami peeked his head out. “I believe I can move the stone. Shall I?”

Hojo nodded. “Carefully.”

The sound of stone scraping on stone was loud, Arik glad when it stopped. The noise started up again, Hojo taking a quick look around to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. The solid block of stone slowly opened, revealing that there was indeed a handle, albeit one on the inside.

Whatever had been sealed in the tomb, which Arik hoped to be the Whispering Sword, had been done so to prevent someone from easily retrieving it.

A musty smell immediately met Arik’s nostrils, one that made him feel as if the tomb had not been opened since it was sealed.

“Well, it’s open,” said Meosa, now in his water form next to Arik, barely visible in the pale sunlight filtering through a cluster of gray clouds.

“We’re going to need a torch,” Hojo said. “Wait here.”

For a brief second, Arik thought he heard what sounded like whispering as Hojo stepped away. He tilted his head toward the tomb, wondering for a moment if it was coming from the depths. Then again, it could have been a pair of passing birds, the flower and fruit that people left at various grave markers bringing all forms of wildlife to the graveyard.

He had noticed earlier that while many of the gravestones were covered in bird droppings, those that had been cared for by families were recently cleaned. The ironic part was that these very tombs, the ones that people visited and left offerings, were what attracted the birds and other animals that sullied the less-visited crypts of their neighbors.

“Not where I expected to find myself, but I guess a graveyard outside of Moonagwa is an appropriate place for a forgotten kami such as me.”

“You knew we were coming here today,” Arik reminded Meosa.

“I know that, I’m just saying in general, and I guess to be forgotten I should first be remembered. But it was good seeing Sukitoma. He seemed genuinely happy to have us as guests. Perhaps I should have stayed there with him. I would do one hell of a job protecting that lake, a much better job than Basha, at least.”

Before they had left the lake, Hojo had another conversation with the skeletal yokai, who had agreed to meet them in the Valleys of the Unknown. It would take Basha longer to reach there due to traveling constraints, the gashadokuro only able to travel at night, and slowly at that. But he promised he would be there at an agreed-upon meeting place.

“What is taking that supposed illusionist so long?” Meosa asked after another minute of waiting for Hojo to procure a torch.

“Be patient.”

He laughed at Arik’s suggestion. “My, how the tables have turned. Spend a few weeks with a shinobi instructor and all of a sudden you are picking up on his habits. Soon enough you will be staring off in the distance with an absent look on your face and coming up with pithy statements.”

Arik was just about to reply to Meosa’s remark when the master illusionist returned, now bearing a pair of torches that he had taken from another tomb. “We’ll light them and then we will see what’s inside. Whatever you do, try not to drop it. We don’t know how deep the crypt goes, and for that matter, we don’t know what traps await.”

“Traps?”

Hojo tilted his chin up. “How far would you go to protect a famed weapon like the Whispering Sword? Think of that, and keep your head on a swivel.”

****

Hojo led the way, Arik behind him. The tomb was much deeper than Arik thought it would be, the pair descending at least twenty steps before they reached a solid foundation, which spread outward through a narrow chamber. The space was cold and it smelled strongly of stone, Arik surmising that the tomb was beneath the ones that surrounded it.

As they came to an antechamber with a low ceiling, he wondered how it had been constructed in the first place. His focus quickly shifted to what lay ahead as he heard more whisper-like sounds.

“It has to be in here,” said Meosa. “That has to be what it sounds like.”

“Did you ever see it in person?”

“Only briefly, but I didn’t hear it at that time.”

Hojo paused, and extended his hand behind him in an effort to let Arik know that something was coming up. The master illusionist pressed into the next room, and as he did a sharp, weblike object shot forward.

Hojo managed to slip to the side, but not before it grazed his cheek.

“Disciple!”

Arik was struck several times with what felt like knife-tipped ropes, the disciple falling to the ground at the sudden attack.

He rolled to the side, his torch kicking embers into the air.

Ignoring the blood and sudden pain he was experiencing, Arik grabbed the torch and was just getting to his feet again when the whispering sound reached him, blades twisting in the air all around him. There was no way to dodge them, Arik practically eviscerated as he was struck multiple times.

He gasped and took a staggering step forward.

Flashes of orange told him that Hojo was off to his right somewhere, crawling on his stomach toward the center of the room, the master illusionist still holding his torch. The underground chamber was too long for Arik to see what was on the other side, but he knew what it was. He could sense it.

Yet again, whip-like blades shot toward him.

Arik tried to sidestep them and failed, the disciple ignoring the pain. His natural healing power had already started, most of this focus on reaching the other side of the room as the bladed ropes continued to come at him, the whispering deafening by this point.

Arik felt Meosa try to stop him, but he shouldered past the aqueous kami’s influence. He ignored another round of attacks, his clothing in bloodied ribbons now, the disciple pressing on as he healed himself.

“Disciple!” Hojo yelled for him again, but Arik knew he could do this, he could reach it. And as the blades came by another time, Arik heard something hit the ground.

He’d lost the Mask of the Fallen.

Arik started to bend down to retrieve the mask, and as he did he felt more wounds open up, the sensation now giving him this strange euphoria as his healing power kicked into overdrive, Revivaura blooming into the air around him.

He placed a hand on the mask and brought it to his face. Arik got back to his feet and tossed his torch forward, revealing what he knew to be the culprit. Arik spotted a pedestal, with a sword propped up vertically on top of it.

He noticed something else. As soon as the mask neared his face, the blades stopped coming for him, but they hadn’t settled down entirely. The tip of the sword split in two, each side like a curled tentacle as if it were curious, as if it wanted another moment to examine him.

Arik took a lumbering step toward the Whispering Sword.

Even with his healing power, the blood loss was making him dizzy. Arik started to lower the Mask of the Fallen, and as he did, the two tips of the sword elongated and shot toward him again.

He brought the mask back to his face and they retreated, Arik certain that the mask was communicating with him, telling him he must grip the Whispering Sword, tame it. He could practically hear it at the back of his head.

(Tame it, tame it…)

Another step forward. The torch he had lost earlier was starting to die down, but Arik was still able to make out the gleam of light in the blade’s reflection.

He heard Hojo say something, Meosa echoing whatever the master illusionist had said. Arik ignored them entirely. It was now between him and the sword, and the only way to tame it would be to take the weapon off its pedestal.

Arik didn’t know what kind of blade it was; he’d never seen a sword that could split into two pieces and extend in size. It seemed to have quite the reach as well, Arik instantly understanding why Coro Pache would have found this kind of weapon useful. He could only imagine how it would be in a fight, the two whip-like blades able to take down multiple opponents, not to mention its range.

Just a little closer…

Arik kept the mask pressed to his face, once again ignoring the pulsing pain in his arms and his legs. His clothing was heavy, saturated with blood, and the disciple was delirious as he finally reached the weapon and placed his hand around the grip of the Whispering Sword.

He withdrew it from its pedestal and dropped to a knee, the energy flooding in and out of him in that moment. He lowered the mask, the sword maintaining its shape, now looking as if it were an ordinary weapon, nothing distinguishing it from the blade still sheathed at Arik’s waist aside from the fact that its grip was vibrating in his hand.

Hojo was at his side a few seconds later. “You’ve done it, disciple.”

Arik gradually looked up at the master illusionist to see that he was covered in cuts and scratches as well, much more beat up than Arik had anticipated. Hojo’s face was a mask of blood, yet he was grinning, and excitement shone in his wild eyes.

“It is a whip sword,” said Hojo with certainty. “This is the moment, disciple, the moment in which everything changes.”

****

Arik immediately attended to Hojo’s wounds, apologizing even though he hadn’t been the one to give them to the master illusionist. He did so with the legendary sword in one hand, still afraid to put it down. As Arik absorbed Hojo’s cuts and scrapes, pain filled him, then slowly dissipated.

Once he was done, he went for his torch, which he was able to light using Hojo’s fire. In the process of doing so, they spotted a pair of sconces.

“That’s better,” Hojo said as two cones of light now illuminated the underground chamber. The master illusionist found an intricately carved scabbard beneath the raised platform where the Whispering Sword had sat. He examined it for a moment, running his finger along its outer edge and quietly commenting on its craftsmanship. Hojo handed the scabbard to Arik. “Even better.”

Arik no longer wore the Mask of the Fallen, the piece now tucked under his arm considering the lower portion of his robes, where his pockets were, had been shredded. “How do I activate the blade?” he asked, examining it yet again.

“Don’t you see, disciple?” This voice belonged to Meosa, who floated off to Arik’s right, a bit of light refracting through his watery form. “Yokaura.”

“You think?” Hojo asked.

“It is exactly how it works, how it can extend as far as it did earlier. It dawned on me when seeing it in action, as if it had a mind of its own. And maybe your mask is the same. It’s alive, disciple, and any object that is alive and shouldn’t be is likely due to Yokaura. It’s activated by your chi-aura and it is Yokauric in nature.”

“Alive…” Arik looked down at the sword. “So I activate it with my chi?”

The Whispering Sword remained a solid piece. Touching the blade, there was no indication that it could come alive as it had done earlier, and the vibrating had stopped. It truly looked like a regular sword now.

“My guess is you would activate it the same way that you heal someone, my boy.”

Arik bit his lip for a moment as he tried to understand what Meosa was suggesting.

If it was like Revivaura, then it meant it was something that should come so naturally to him that it merely happened on its own, something he actively had to stop in certain situations, like when he needed to appear injured, or more like those around him.

Does it activate in the same way as Revivaura? Arik thought as he turned the sword around in his hand, his eyes tracing to the tip of the blade.

He remembered how he had first learned to use Revivaura, the meditation techniques, how the Academy of Healing Arts had trained disciples to unlock that particular aspect of chi and build upon it. Arik had now experienced other aspects of chi, Thunderaura and Chimaura, to limited success. The One-Count Strike had been his first true foray into using another type of chi, and while he was still mastering this skill, Arik wondered if it extended to using a weapon like the Whispering Sword.

There’s only one way to find out, Arik thought as he steeled himself.

He stepped away from Meosa and Hojo, and as he did Arik released all the tension in his body, willing the weapon to activate.

The sword buzzed in his hand, the blade curving just a bit at the tip as it began to split into two pieces. Arik heard the whispering, and as the blade split it grew slightly louder.

“Remarkable,” Hojo said once the blade had split all the way to the hilt.

As if they were liquid, the two strips of sword seeped toward the ground, only increasing in tightness once Arik brought the weapon to the ready. “What a strange weapon…”

“Imagine it like a whip. It is clear that the Whispering Sword is willing to communicate with you, disciple. Now you have to shape how you use it.”

Like a whip, Arik thought as he sent the blade forward. Doing so caused the demarcated sword to twist into a tight spiral. Arik shook it out and tried again, the whispering blades actually scissoring forward to some degree, stopping about three feet away from them.

“Think of it like gold,” Hojo said.

“Like gold?”

“You can continue to hammer gold, and as you do it will just expand into a thinner and thinner piece. It is valuable in that way, unlike other metals. That has to be how it operates. Whatever the Whispering Sword is truly crafted from should be able to extend quite far. It made it all the way to the door of the chamber,” Hojo said as he motioned to the entrance. “That’s nearly twenty feet away. The range is incomprehensible, and you must trust it, so think of it like gold. Don’t let its range disturb you.”

“And the better he gets with the sword, the further it may be able to go.”

Hojo glanced at Meosa, who continued to float next to Arik, his watery form sparkling in the torchlight. “Yes, kami, I would say that is the case as well. You’re not going to be able to test it out much in here, but we will train with it later. For now, you should just practice activating it.”

“How long are we going to be in here?” Arik asked Hojo. It only dawned on him after asking this question how spooky their current location was, in the depths of the tomb.

“We will have to wait till night to leave because of our clothing. I can sew some of it, but it would be best for us to travel through the night to a safe house I know of between here and Iga. We can recover there for a day or so and give you a chance to better acclimate to using the Whispering Sword. From that point, we will need to prepare our assault against Kogu and Nobunaga’s supply line. This is going to be quite a challenge for you, disciple, and a challenge for me as well. Based on the information I’ve seen, it is quite the operation that Kogu and Nobunaga have going in the valley. Disrupting it won’t be easy. But I have faith in us, and once we have our eyes on it, we will get a better idea of what to do and what infiltration technique we will utilize next.”

“Right,” Arik said as the Whispering Sword returned to its solid form. He couldn’t shake this feeling that things were about to get as interesting as they were complicated.

Still, Arik was ready.

.Chapter Five.

“Compete with no one, and no one can compete with you.”

–A quote attributed to Combat Master Sem Floana a week before she challenged a rival combat master and died from her injuries, Year 541.

Arik did his best to ignore the breeze coming down from the north, originating in the Onyx Realm.

He experienced a bit of melancholy in that frigid wind, the weather sparking memories of his past, when he was innocent of all of this, a life cracked open by circumstance. Had he never been called into action, Arik would have gone to the mastery school and continued his studies, eventually becoming a lecturer himself or moving to another one of the academies, perhaps working for the royal family or in his home of Sunocea.

Never in his wildest dreams could he have pictured himself in the company of a Hidden Warrior and a kami that had been sealed up in a cave since the time of Coro Pache. Never could he have imagined himself as the type of person to take another’s life rather than heal it, or truly dedicate his life to sword mastery, conjuring a plan for revenge against Nobunaga coupled with a goal of rescuing his sister.

Never.

Arik had been competitive back at the Academy, and he had been the type to go against the grain to some degree, which was why he had studied the Divine Branch of Wound Transfer. Yet even in his wildest dreams, he could never have imagined himself as the person he was now. And what scared him most was that a part of him liked it, the adrenaline, the adventure, the chance to truly effect change, be it good or bad, maybe even the power inherent in the violence he was capable of producing.

It was intoxicating.

And it was only the beginning.

The Whispering Sword was now sheathed at his waist. Hojo had instructed Arik to leave his other blade behind in the crypt. From here on out he would learn to master his new weapon, do or die.

“It is your forever blade,” Hojo had told him after Arik had placed the sword he had been carrying on the pedestal within the tomb. “And there’s no turning back now, disciple. Do not forget that.”

It was clear in that moment and Arik knew it would become even clearer as their journey progressed—the door he had opened in obtaining the Whispering Sword would be impossible to close.

****

Arik’s tattered robes were no help against the cold wind even if Hojo had been able to mend a few of the bigger rips and tears. As Meosa had commented several times now, the two truly looked like vagrants, no need for them to put on disguises at this point.

With the Coro Pache book in his bag, as well as the Mask of the Fallen, Arik felt as if he were one step closer to understanding the man, the myth, and the legend that had taken the three realms by storm over five hundred years ago.

While Coro Pache wasn’t able to handle the Mask of the Fallen, he had used the sword for all except his first few battles, at least according to what was written in his biography. Like the mask, Arik felt as if the blade were imbued with the chaos that Coro had experienced, regardless of the fact that it was made or powered by Yokaura, which likely only enhanced it.

The sword was alive, according to Meosa. Arik could feel the weapon buzz in his hand, when he used it, the dual whip blades fluid in movement when summoned. He hadn’t noticed it communicate with him, not like the few times he could have sworn the Mask of the Fallen had reached out to him. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t reached out to him in some way.

Arik could visualize himself now, confronted by false shinobi or square-hatted warriors of the South, drawing the weapon and letting it sync with the Mask of the Fallen, the blades splitting and whistling around him, whispering as they cut through flesh, striking each target pointed out by his mask in a matter of seconds.

He would be a whirlwind of death, an opponent the likes of which most had never encountered before, a rumor, a myth, a ghost, and depending on how far his goal took him, a legend.

No one would be able to stop him if the vision Arik had was indeed a possibility, especially with the sword’s incredible range. Even if the blade material thinned out at further distances, all it took was a needled-sword tip digging into an eye socket and out the back of someone’s head to extinguish life. The Whispering Sword was a monstrous weapon.

Maybe there was more to what Hojo had said about no turning back at this point.

Maybe it was a warning.

The land shifted from pockets of enormous rocks and thick woods to long stretches of nothingness, the ground parched. Arik and Hojo continued onward into the night. The master illusionist stopped before a stream and they drank, Hojo’s sleek form silhouetted by the moon, the conical hat on his head obscuring his features as always.

Every now and then, Arik would put his hand on the grip of his weapon, feeling it buzz, aware that it was alive. There were several times that he wanted to draw it, whether it be in response to a sound in the distance, like the howl of a coyote, or simply to hold the sword and feel its weight in his hand.

But he didn’t give into this urge.

Arik knew it was important to respect the weapon, and that even if Hojo wouldn’t have said anything about his curiosity, there was a protocol that needed to be maintained. The Whispering Sword was the kind of blade that shouldn’t exist, one that would disturb anyone who saw it in action, but there was still tradition, namely one regarding the most respectful place to keep a sword—its sheath. Not only that, it would be highly uncommon for someone to walk along with their sword at the ready if they weren’t planning to use it.

Arik fell into a meditative spell as the night shifted to morning. He could have sworn he heard whispering at the back of his head, as if the sword were behind him, egging the disciple on.

What are the long-term effects of having a weapon like this? he thought as they came to a stream, Hojo silently pointing out the best rocks to use to cross it. A weapon either made of chi or imbued by it was no laughing matter, and Arik suspected that long-term usage of such an item came with complications, ones that he wouldn’t be able to heal from. Psychological complications.

Is this what has happened to Hojo? As Arik looked over to the master illusionist, an image traced across his mind, the disciple remembering what it had been like to see Hojo’s form melting away when he had retrieved the Mask of the Fallen. He kept seeing this in his mind’s eye more and more when looking at the master illusionist, as if some higher power was trying to warn him of what was to come. Would keeping items like the Mask of the Fallen or the Whispering Sword change him in the same way? Was suffering from Hidden Warrior Sickness merely suffering tied to usage of a chi-driven object or power?

All things that remained to be seen, yet Arik suspected as much.

He sensed it was coming, that moment of reckoning, one in which he would know for certain the effects of these kinds of objects and experimenting with chi. After all, there was one thing that he hadn’t discussed with Hojo, the reason why masters in both the Onyx and Crimson Realms generally stuck to one aspect of chi, one learning path. Perhaps studying more than one chi branch was too powerful, something that the Hidden Warriors from the School of the Illusion never spoke of publicly yet struggled with personally.

There really was no telling, not at this point, but if anyone was willing to take the experiment, it was Arik.

He had made it this far, and as Hojo had said, there was no turning back. For his sister, for those he lost by the hands of Nobunaga—Arik would do whatever it took to exact his revenge.

****

The trio stopped at the foot of a terraced hill surrounded by trees. Arik spotted a home at the top that matched the description of one of the illusionists’ safe houses. It was dark, but from experience, that didn’t mean someone wasn’t inside.

“I will check the place first for any indication of Sengum Minamoto.”

“Shouldn’t I check with you?”

Hojo shook his head. “There may be traps that you wouldn’t be familiar with, disciple. It is best if you stay put.”

“Agreed, but you may benefit from my aid.”

Hojo nodded. “That is right, kami. Would you care to join me?”

Arik felt the slightest sensation on the hairs of his arms as Meosa drifted away from him. The aqueous kami rarely left Arik’s side, and he had certainly never joined Hojo before. This told Arik just how serious Hojo was, and he knew that if there was some kind of attack, that Meosa would be able to support him.

Still, he wished there was more he could do.

The master illusionist stepped away, leaving the disciple crouching next to a tree, the Whispering Sword at his side, Mask of the Fallen in his bag, along with his shinobi tools. Another thought came to him. If something happened to Hojo, what would he do?

While it would be prudent for him to disrupt the supply chain, there was no way Arik would be able to do something like that on his own. They were already going to be severely outnumbered, and without Hojo, Arik would be at a loss in how to actually stop the arms build-up. In that case, he’d head south. If something happened to Hojo, Arik would continue to work with his new weapon and head south.

Arik placed his hand on the grip of his new blade. Yet again, a slight buzzing sensation in his palm, not enough to throw him off, only a spark. He started to yawn and stopped once he heard muffled yelling ahead.

Arik resisted the urge to run forward, and it was all of twenty seconds before more commotion met his ears. Was Sengum Minamoto there? What had happened?

Arik could no longer hide in the shadows.

He tore off in the direction of the sound, the disciple finding a pathway through a cluster of shrubs that pushed him out onto one of the graveled terraces. He ascended the terraces, four in total, and reached a home that had practically been consumed yet again by the land, vines tracing over it, moss growing on its stony outer walls.

The commotion was coming from inside.

Arik shouldered through the door, and drew his sword, prepared for anything, hoping to do something noble in saving the man who had guided him in his time of need.

What he found instead caused his knees to buckle.

A woman stood over Hojo, her back to Arik, a sword in her hand. Not only that, there was a heavy smoke in the air, one that Arik immediately recognized was tainted with some kind of poisonous herb.

Inhaling it made his lungs feel prickly, but he did so anyway as he prepared his sword.

“Disciple, no…”

The woman paused, and as the smoke cleared, she turned to Arik.

The woman had short hair and an angular face, Arik not certain where he had seen her before. But he knew who she was just by the way she stood, how poised she was to strike, a looseness in her shoulders and knees. Arik spotted a kitsune mask on the single table near the kitchenette, all but confirming who she was.

“We meet again,” Tayaura said, tilting her head as she looked Arik over.

Something new came to Arik in that moment, the disciple recalling the odd barmaid he had encountered in Iga. At the time, he had been trying to get some information on Kogu from a tailor, and upon seeing the face of the woman before him, he was certain, without a shadow of a doubt that it had been her.

It had been Tayaura all along…

Not only that, she was the same woman that he had once journeyed across the desert with, and the same masked shinobi he had fought while infiltrating an estate. Even if things were incredibly tense, he couldn’t help but appreciate how well she had conned him up to that point in his life, especially in taking on the disguise of a barmaid.

Tayaura truly was Hojo’s daughter.

“Do not engage her…”

Arik really didn’t have a choice once Tayaura shot forward with a blade similar to Hojo’s, a hint of black along its fuller. He instinctively brought his sword up to absorb her attack, immediately considering the various ways to disarm her.

“No!”

Something about the pain in Hojo’s voice caused Arik to trigger the Whispering Sword, which split in two the next time Tayaura came around, the dual blades scissoring toward the woman. Arik pulled the sword back, trying to yank it away from her, but like a string that had been released from its spool, the blades kept slicing forward.

One blade struck Tayaura’s arm, the other opening a slice across her chest.

Meosa rushed forward in his water form, the kami suddenly appearing, as if Hojo had been telling him to hold back. He shot watery lassos around Tayaura’s arms and legs and yanked her away from Arik, who was still trying to get control over his wild weapons.

To prevent any more injuries, Arik exploded out of the door of the safe house, the two tips of his blade trailing behind him. “Stop!” He shook the weapon. “I command you to stop!”

The Whispering Sword shriveled up and then hardened again, as if it hadn’t just unleashed chaos. With a huff, Arik sent it back into its scabbard and rushed inside the home, where he found Hojo now reassuring his daughter as she bled out, Meosa hovering nearby.

“I can fix it.” Arik slid on his knees over to them.

The puncture wound was deep; not only had it pressed through her bicep, it had also dug into her rib cage. The other cut was more of a concern, tracing across the side of her neck, nearly slitting her throat.

He would focus here first. Arik lowered his head, ignoring his surroundings as he began absorbing the injury. As he did so he once again noticed how exhausted he was from the night’s travel, the adrenaline still surging through him counteracting his lower energy levels.

With Tayaura’s neck taken care of, Arik moved to her arm and punctured torso, water-like energy floating in the air around him as he used Revivaura to completely heal Hojo’s daughter.

Once he was finished, he pressed back, not sure of where this would go next.

“I told you,” Tayaura said in a haggard voice, “I can do this myself.”

“No, no, you can’t,” Hojo told her. His voice was strained, likely due to whatever poison Tayaura had used on him when he entered the safe house.

“I can heal you too,” Arik told Hojo.

“Not now, disciple.”

“Disciple?” A look of shock traced across Tayaura’s face, one that carried with it something akin to fear. It was as if she had just realized what Arik had done to her, and, at the same time, she knew how rare someone like him was in their world. “It… he’s actually a disciple?”

“He is… one of the last.”

“Why is he here? What is this weapon he possesses?”

“Tayaura, you must listen to me.”

“I’ve heard enough. Your inaction is what has led things to turn out this way.” She stood, her hair falling into her face as she curled her fists at her sides. Her sword was off to the right. Had she wanted it, all she would need to do was duck down and grab it. “And what is this thing? This yokai?”

“Yokai? How dare you! I am the type of being that you should show some respect to, shinobi-ess! I am Meosa, best of my kind, a kami, one that your father here foolishly told to remain quiet while he tried to talk some bloody sense into you.”

Tayaura shook her head, confusion tracing across her face and settling. She regained her composure in a matter of seconds, almost as if her composure was an illusion as well. “A disciple and a kami. Why are these people with you, Father?”

“I will explain everything, but… but put your sword away and please, settle down for once. This doesn’t need to escalate any further than it already has, shadow-child. I’m not dormant, as you have claimed me to be in our last encounter, before Iga. If you had listened… if you understood my methods, you would understand what I am actually doing. You would understand how our plans align. There is symmetry here, my daughter, my shadow-child. Symmetry.”

“Symmetry? You let them destroy the school, everything you stood for, everything… everything you taught me. Sengum Minamoto. You let him win. He killed Hirokuni. Does that mean nothing to you? And it is my goal, no, my destiny to right this wrong. All of it…” She swept her hand across the room. “Everything that our kind has achieved, all the stories that you told me of Hidden Warriors and the power of Chimaura, all that is lost, dying, and distorted because of your decisions.”

“Please…”

“He’s trying to do something,” Arik said in an attempt to ease the tension. Blood had been shed and was still pooled on the wooden floor. The sooner they moved this confrontation to a conversation, the better.

“You know nothing of this man.”

“He’s right, shadow-child. I am… I am trying to do something. Please, listen to me. Let me explain what has happened thus far, and what we are attempting. I swear to you that they align with your plans. Let us put on some tea and discuss things, like old times. You will find that the disciple has a reason to be here as well.”

Tayaura looked at Arik with a strange mixture of shock and disgust. Oddly enough, he interpreted this disgust as something she felt for herself. He couldn’t shake this notion, even though it made little sense to him at the time.

“Please, shadow-child. Hear me out. Not only that, I’m…”

“Don’t say it,” she told him, tearing up.

“It’s true, and it’s happening. I can feel it,” Hojo said, desperation in his voice. “I’ve seen it in others before. I’ve pressed too far into the… I’m…”

“Don’t…”

“I’m dying. The Hidden Warrior Sickness. I recognize it in myself. If Sengum hadn’t killed Hirokuni, it would have happened to him as well. I’ve seen it in the others at the School. I’m dying, please believe me. Please, hear us out. I promise you that our plans align.”

Tayaura wiped a few tears away, a hardened look tracing across her face. “I will make some tea,” she finally said. “But that doesn’t mean that I am agreeing to whatever it is you are planning to do, and it doesn’t mean that I believe in your self-diagnosis. It is all mental, and you know it is. If anyone can combat it, it is you, Father. You aren’t like Hirokuni, nor are you like the others.”

“I understand you feel that way.” Hojo got to his feet and placed his hat over his head. “Truly, I do. But you must believe me, and for the time being, you must trust me.”

.Chapter Six.

“Decapitation will prevent your enemy from plotting against you. When in doubt, cleave.”

–Combat Master Travin Yarat, as told to his nursemaid two months before the start of the Crimson-Onyx Shroud War, Year 1080.

The tea that Tayaura brewed was warm and thick. From what Arik could tell, it was made out of a local root and flavored with milk, which led him to believe that she had been at the safe house for more than a day. After all, how would she have gotten the milk? It was small details like this that made Arik feel as if he were truly beginning to embrace the lessons that Hojo continued to impart upon him.

For an illusionist, or at the very least someone learning to become one, small details could be the difference between life and death.

“I find it very interesting that now, after everything that has happened, you have decided to do something,” Tayaura said after she had given her father plenty of time to speak, time in which Hojo merely sipped from his tea. “Why do something now, when you could have done something then? You are too late. You have missed your opportunity.”

“Missed his opportunity? Bah. These things take time.”

Tayaura turned to Meosa, tilting her head as she looked the kami over. “You are defending him? How well do you even know him?”

Meosa scoffed at her remark. “I would watch the tone you take with me, shinobi-ess. While I may not be the biggest fan of your father, I do know that he has…”

“Yes?” she asked after Meosa trailed off.

“He keeps his secrets, and I’m sure growing up, that this was a vexation for you, a vexation that I’d care not to hear about because humans whining about their terrible childhoods is something that bores me. Your father means well, at least he has semi-convinced me as such. I’m sure he has his reasons for his actions.”

“You don’t know anything about what happened at the School.”

“Listen to you, speaking to me like I haven’t been alive and seen your kind for hundreds of years. I don’t think it would be a stretch for me to say that a world without shinobis and Hidden Warriors might be one that is a bit less devious. We would still have the thugs from the south and the fools from the north to contend with, but at least there wouldn’t be trickery and chicanery every time they met in the middle.”

“We ran into Sengum Minamoto,” Arik said, instantly regretting joining the dialogue with this statement due to the way that Tayaura looked at him next.

“You did?” Tayaura’s glare shifted from Arik to Hojo. “And? Did you do what needed to be done?”

Hojo sighed. “I tried.”

“All of this, all of it is because of him, Father. I can’t believe I’m the one that has to remind you of this!”

Once again, Hojo didn’t say anything. As they sat there in silence, Arik took Tayaura in for a second time, remembering how quiet she had been in the desert. He still found it odd to hear her voice, to know that he had met her several times before.

“What say you?”

Hojo finally looked up at his daughter, who now stood with the tea kettle in her hand as if she were going to toss it at him. He calmly motioned his cup to her and she filled it with agitation, Arik feeling as if he were witnessing a private moment between the two. They were both so focused on each other that he felt as if he were a ghost, and wished there was something he could say to lighten the mood.

As always, Meosa did the exact opposite. “Well, I can see why he abandoned you.”

Tayaura’s face went pale. “Come again?”

“If you were my daughter, I would have left you to defend yourself at that slave coliseum in Omoto. Ha!” Once again, Meosa cackled at his own twisted humor. “No daughter of mine would speak to me with such a biting tongue, I’ll tell you that much!”

The female illusionist set the kettle down and turned to Meosa. “Who… who do you think you are?”

“Who do I think I am? It’s bloody clear who I am! Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, shinobi-ess? Have you ever drowned while standing up? Word to the wise—be respectful of that which you do not understand. That must be something one of your Hidden Warrior false shinobi gurus has surmised.”

“Enough, Meosa.”

Arik was stunned to hear Hojo actually use the kami’s name.

“We need to discuss what it is that we plan to do,” the master illusionist said in an even voice, immediately cutting through any tension in the room. “Our goals align, Tayaura. You do not have to join us, shadow-child, but I have a feeling that the four of us would do better working together. You are here for a reason, after all. You discovered the same information I did, perhaps more, about the supply chain, a weapon build-up outside of Iga destined for the conflict between the North and the South. We are here to disrupt that. And I believe you are here for the very same reason.”

“Go on…”

“A disruption to the supply chain could prevent the war entirely. There are a number of ways that you would have likely played this out, from Nobunaga turning on Kogu, or from Kogu’s actions being discovered by our own government, at least the faction that isn’t already in his pocket. There is a very high chance that the destruction of these weapons will make war at this time impossible, which could lead to a number of other scenarios, including what Arik would like to do.”

Tayaura turned to the disciple. “And what is that?”

“Nobunaga…” Arik cleared his throat, an edge quickly coming to him as he spoke again. “Nobunaga ordered the destruction of my Academy, the Academy of Healing Arts. My family was there. Everyone I know was murdered around me, and my sister—Mori—was taken by Nobunaga.”

Tayaura’s eyes twitched. “You… you were there?”

“I was. I was unable to save her. All I had was a wooden sword…”

The female illusionist looked away. “That sounds like… like something that would be hard to experience. How do you know your sister was taken?”

“Because I saw her.” Arik explained the tournament he had attended in the Crimson Realm, the one at the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts in Mogra hosted by the late Altai Masamune. “And I saw my healing teacher as well…”

“With Nobunaga?”

“Yes. Which leads me to believe that Master Guri Yarna must have had something to do with the attack. That remains to be seen. But to answer your earlier question, my goal is Nobunaga. His death, the collapse of his campaign to assault the Onyx Realm. I know that there are things about the spillage of blood never being enough, but if I’m able to do this, it will prevent”—Arik shook his head—“countless deaths. An untold number. Not only that…”

Tayaura nodded, clearly recognizing the conviction in Arik’s voice. “Avenging those who have died, your people. I get it.”

“Exactly. And not just them, not just the people at my Academy. But others I have met,” he said, remembering people like Domen, the wooly kayno-herding youth who lived along the outer rim of Mogra. He recalled what it had been like at the tournament to come face-to-face with him, Domen looking for glory, Arik forfeiting the fight.

Thinking about it now made him wish he had truly been able to utilize Meosa to his full potential at that time, perhaps launching himself at Nobunaga. But he also knew that there would have been a complication in doing this. Enenra, a wind kami, and apparently a rival of Meosa’s, had joined Nobunaga. That sort of attack wouldn’t have been doable, even if it was something he fantasized about.

But now that I have the Whispering Sword…

“You know what you are trying to do is impossible, right?”

“Weren’t you the one who was planning to assault Nobunaga’s supply chain by yourself?” Meosa asked Tayaura. “How are the disciple’s goals any different than yours?”

Tayaura never admitted to seeing Meosa’s point as she continued. “I infiltrated Kogu’s operation for a time as well, learning more about what he was doing. But word travels quickly, and I had to flee once Sengum learned that Hojo’s daughter was sniffing around.”

“That was why we encountered you in Iga,” Arik said, remembering his fight against the kitsune-masked woman.

“It is, disciple.”

“Please, call me Arik.”

“I will call you disciple.”

“In that case”—Arik bit his lip—“I agree with Hojo. We have a similar goal. We should be working together on it.”

“You truly have no idea about me, nor do you know my father.”

Hojo cleared his throat. “The disciple and I have been through a good number of things since we’ve met. He is learning, and you would do best to learn from him as well.”

“Learn what exactly? Revivaura?”

“You should be so lucky to understand Revivaura, to be able to utilize it. The things that happen to people that we both know, the people that we care about, he could have stopped all of it. Including your mother’s—”

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s possible, shadow-child. He could have cured your mother’s cancer.”

Arik hadn’t experienced healing cancers before; it was something he would have studied deeper in a mastery school, not something he would likely take on without the guidance of one of his former teachers.

“Show her what you can do, disciple. She must understand.”

“Show her?” Arik asked Hojo.

The master illusionist took out the crystal throwing dagger that Sukitoma had given him and placed his hand on the table. He brought it down onto his hand, wincing as the crystal kunai tore through veins and muscle, blood instantly appearing.

“What are you doing?” Tayaura asked.

Within a few moments Arik was next to Hojo, healing his wound as the master illusionist examined the bloody kunai with a dark look on his face. “Do you understand now, shadow-child?”

Tayaura blinked rapidly, giving away the fact that she was trying to hide the look of astonishment on her face. “I… see.”

Arik was aware by now that people all over Taomoni knew about Revivaura and the disciples who could utilize this particular aspect of chi, yet their reactions to experiencing it happen in real time always varied. Knowing and seeing were two very different things.

“I… I want you to have this,” Hojo told his daughter. “A kami made it for me. There is nothing like it.”

Tayaura looked at the crystal kunai with disgust as blood dripped from the tip to the wooden floor of the safe house. “I’ll pass.”

Hojo cast his head down, his face obscured yet again.

“What else can he do?” asked Tayaura.

“He can use his healing power in a combative way.”

“You sure have become an open book now that you are around your daughter,” Meosa said, warping the tension to some degree. “Why would you have him reveal this power?”

“You’re right. It has been a long day. Perhaps I’ve said enough.” Hojo removed his hand from the table, the crystal throwing knife going back into his robes.

“Show me what else you can do,” Tayaura said as she went for the throwing knife. She pointed at Arik. “Show me.”

“What’s wrong with the two of you?” Meosa asked.

Hojo nodded, never taking his eyes off his daughter as he spoke: “Go on, disciple.”

Tayaura approached Arik, and offered him her hand. As soon as he touched it, Arik released some of the wound he just healed, along with whatever else he had stored up that day.

Tayaura jumped backward, alarm tracing across her face.

She came forward again to instinctively swing at Arik. Hojo stepped in the way, blocking her attack. He fluidly twisted her arm around behind her back, holding her there, keeping Tayaura prone for a moment. “Now do you understand?”

“Let… let go of me.”

Hojo released his daughter.

She looked down at her hand and back up at Arik. “You can transfer the injury, the pain.”

“I can.”

Tayaura found the nearest chair and sat. “This is a lot to process. All of it.”

“I suggest we continue our dialogue in the morning,” Hojo said, calm once again, as if he hadn’t just stopped his daughter’s attack.

“It is morning.”

“Then tonight, shadow-child. Let’s call a truce for now and we will continue our discussions later, once we have had some rest.”

Tayaura blew away a strand of hair that had fallen into her face. “Fine, I agree to a parley.”

****

It might not have been necessary, but Meosa promised Arik and Hojo that he would watch over them while they slept, to make sure that Tayaura didn’t try anything. He said this quietly, while Hojo’s daughter was on the other side of the room near the kitchenette.

“That won’t be necessary,” Hojo assured Meosa, the master illusionist now lying on his back on a straw mat, his conical hat covering his face to shade himself from the columns of light that broke through the shutters.

To be sure that Tayaura didn’t rob them, Arik tucked his sheath beneath the straw mat, the disciple lying on his back and using his satchel to prop his head up, the Mask of the Fallen inside. They hadn’t changed robes and Arik felt dirty, yet just about as soon as both men lay down to rest, they were asleep.

It truly had been a long day.

The disciple awoke several hours later, once Tayaura had reentered the safe house with what looked like a collection of scrolls. It wasn’t quite evening, the sun still bright enough through the shutters to cast pillars of rectangular light across the wooden floor. As his vision blurred into existence, Arik saw that she, too, wore a conical hat, which told him that she had likely stepped out to meet an informant.

Arik stood, and as he did he noticed that a fresh set of robes had been laid out for him at the foot of his straw mat, as for Hojo, who was still resting.

Arik stepped behind a partition and changed, the disciple glad to be wearing fresh clothing.

Tayaura didn’t say anything to him as he approached the table, Arik now seeing that Hojo’s daughter was going over the schematics of what looked to be military installations. It was quite detailed, listing both entry points and materials that were used in building the three installations. There was also a list of siege engines and where they would be stored.

“Is that it?” Arik asked quietly.

Tayaura finally looked up at him, and for a very brief moment, he sensed a sudden softness behind the hard glare on her face. It dissipated as soon as it had appeared, leaving Arik to wonder if he’d seen it in the first place. Perhaps it was a figment of his imagination.

“The amount of trouble I went through to get this, but I have a good spy…”

“What kind of spy?” Arik asked, recalling the lesson Hojo had given him on spies. He continued to keep his voice down to let the master illusionist sleep just a bit longer, if he was indeed resting.

Tayaura paused, something akin to a smirk taking shape on her face. “So you have learned the spy lesson, it seems.”

“Five kinds: local, inward, converted, doomed, and surviving.”

“You can even recite them, would you look at that. I remember what it was like to be your age.”

“My age? We’re around the same age, are we not? I’m twenty.”

“Let me rephrase, disciple. I remember what it’s like to still be new to all of this, to see it with a flowery, curious perspective. That changes, you know. The deeper you delve into the illusionist ways, the harder it is to come up for air. It’s like diving in a flooded cavern in that way. And to answer your question, the man I’m working with would be classified as an inward spy. He is an official working for Kogu, overseeing some of the construction at the site.”

“Did you pay him off?”

“No, I merely borrowed some of the same information that Sengum Minamoto already had on him, that he was a philanderer who has an affinity for other women who aren’t his wife. It’s pretty easy to use infidelity to convince someone to do what you would like. But there are numerous ways to extract information. Find out what they are most afraid to share with the world and threaten to share it. I believe he will soon become a doomed spy, as it is known. He thinks I’m planning one thing, that I’m trying to free some of the people they are holding prisoner there.”

“They have prisoners?”

“Just a few low-level officials from Iga that weren’t willing to look the other way. To do what they have done, to move the supplies that they need to move, they have had to use local sources. They have mostly paid people off, but a bribe can only go so far, and not everyone is for sale. Those not open to negotiations have taken them prisoner.”

“Do you know how many?”

“Just a handful, and it isn’t my focus at the moment. That said, my spy will certainly make the mistake of telling someone what I was after, which I hope will divert some of the guards to the prison camp they have started.”

“How many people are there? Do you have an estimate?”

“This has become a problem with keeping what is happening secret from the Jadean government. Kogu has been moving small pockets of Crimson warriors to the region since before the invasion of your Realm, and those numbers have swelled.”

“There are Crimson warriors there?”

Tayaura nodded. “I’ve only been in once, but I’ve seen the robes, and I would say that there are now close to three thousand. Maybe more. This number is based on documents from a month ago. I assume there are more.”

“Over three thousand? How are they keeping this from the government?”

“The region outside of Iga, the Valleys of the Unknown. How much do you know about it?”

“I’ve only seen the ruins,” said Arik.

“Not a day goes by when a mist isn’t covering certain parts of these valleys. There are numerous areas that have been hidden away to the government for some time. Itako go there occasionally for rituals, and there are said to be strange yokai in the area. Kind of like the one that seems to be attached at your hip.”

“I chose him, not the other way around,” Meosa told her, his form suddenly becoming visible. “And you’d be careful to call me a yokai, shinobi-ess. I am, and will remain, a kami. There’s a distinction. But you are right about that region. It has always been a mystery, which is the reason for its namesake.”

Tayaura gave him a dirty look and continued: “Nobunaga isn’t superstitious, nor is he afraid of yokai. This makes it the perfect hiding place, really, to build an army. Once he is ready, it won’t be difficult for him to lead his troops out of the valley and straight to the border, to Austere.”

“What about food? That must take a lot of food.”

“What do you think Kogu has been supplying, disciple? Food and resources, as well as smuggled weapons from the south. Crimsonians are keen to use their own siege weapons. They do, however, like some of the more explosive material available from the quarries of the Jade Realm. But even with these schematics and what they have or have not yet built, we won’t know more, or…” She hesitated. “I won’t know more until I visit again.”

“We should speak to Hojo about this.”

“Why do you think I have laid all of this out for him to see?”

“So you are agreeing to join us?”

Tayaura swept her hair behind both ears and nodded slowly at Arik. “My goal remains the same as it has since the School of Illusion was disbanded. Sengum Minamoto will be here. If not directly, his highest lieutenants will certainly be present. With what you can do, and what my father is able to do if he actually puts his mind to it, this should be something we are able to accomplish. I intend to make not only the destruction of Nobunaga’s forces, but the death of Sengum Minamoto a reality.”

****

Arik couldn’t hide his excitement as Tayaura told her father about what she had uncovered as Hojo looked through the schematics and other documents that she recently acquired from her spy.

“You have done well, shadow-child,” he finally told her, the hint of a proud smile on his face. “And this information will be instrumental in what we need to do.”

There was a sudden burst of hopefulness in Tayaura’s eyes that hadn’t been there in their first encounter that morning, Arik seeing quite clearly that she still, in her own way, looked up to the master illusionist.

In their discussion previously, Arik had learned that her mother had died from cancer, leaving him to now understand that Tayaura had truly been raised by Hojo, that he likely had been training her since an early age.

Arik tried to imagine Tayaura as a young girl, watching her odd father, a flash of images coming to Arik that he knew weren’t real, yet they felt that way. He saw Hojo coming in from a night of infiltration, perhaps with blood traced across the front of his robes. Arik imagined what their training must have been like, from deception to mastering disguises and finally, to combat, how it must have been when Hojo first demonstrated his power to her.

“It looks like they have spread their camps out so they aren’t all clustered together,” Tayaura explained as she tapped her finger on a hand-drawn map. “Three main bases in total, each about a half mile apart.”

“Three installations. What else have you noticed?” asked Hojo.

“Aside from the fog in the accumulation of Nobunaga’s blades, not much. They continue to fortify the buildings they have put up during the daytime, as well as a wall they’ve erected. Nighttime is total lockdown because of potential yokai in the region, but there have been developments at the front of the first installation, pillowers and merchants opening up shops.”

“My, how it has grown. And how long again until Nobunaga has everything he needs?”

“Two weeks to a month, from what I’ve been told.”

Hojo turned to Arik. “That gives you time, disciple.”

“Time?”

“I would like you to step outside with me. Grab your sword. Tayaura, you may come as well.”

“And my mask?”

“Sure, the mask too.”

Tayaura glanced from Arik to her father. “What is the mask exactly?”

“The Mask of the Fallen. It belonged to Coro Pache, same as my sword,” Arik told her, not revealing everything that it did. While Hojo had been quite honest with his daughter, Arik didn’t know if he should do the same.

Then again, we are planning to join forces…

“Coro Pache? I always thought he was just a legend.”

“No, he certainly existed. I met him. Sort of a quiet guy, but a natural-born leader. His reincarnation may be in there somewhere,” Meosa said as he thrust a watery finger into Arik’s chest.

“Let’s not start that conversation again.” The disciple retrieved the Mask of the Fallen and tied it behind the back of his head, the piece instantly warm across his face. Once he had his sword, he stepped outside with Hojo.

The moon was bright enough to illuminate the terraces that surrounded the safe house, the makings of a peaceful scene. Hojo pointed at a tree on the outskirts of the property, one that had grown between the two bottom terraces. “Cut those branches down.”

“With… my sword?”

Meosa laughed. “No, disciple, use your Revivaura. Of course, you need to use your sword.”

Arik grunted a response as he drew his blade, the disciple suddenly feeling foolish with Tayaura standing there, her arms crossed over her chest. It would be impossible for her not to judge him at this junction, especially if she had been trained by Hojo as well.

The weapon now in his hand, Arik looked down at the Whispering Sword and bit his lip. He could feel its power, and he also noticed how it had synced to some degree with his mask, a connection between the two that Arik wasn’t able to put to words. Yet what Hojo had asked him to do was still something he was unsure of.

A slight breeze covered the faint sound of whispering for a moment, but soon, Arik heard it, his blade starting to warp as it split in two. He looked up at the tree, to the closest limb, which was about eight feet away from him.

Arik thrust his sword toward it, and the animated blade flopped to the side, landing on the ground.

“Not bad.”

Arik ignored Meosa. He had been able to use the blade properly before, when he had burst in on Tayaura standing over her father, a poison in the air. He didn’t quite understand how they had gotten to that position in the first place, but his weapon had worked at that time.

Determined not to make a fool of himself in front of Tayaura, Arik brought the sword at the ready, focusing instead on his stance, envisioning himself using the weapon like it was an ordinary sword.

This seemed to help to a slight degree. The two blades twisted forward and nicked the limb, cutting a chunk out of it.

“Cut it down completely.”

“I could lift you up there,” Meosa offered Arik.

I have to do this on my own, Arik thought as he once again moved to strike the limb down. It wasn’t very thick, and based on how strong the Whispering Sword was, at least how strong it had been in the tomb the previous day, he knew it was a possibility.

Yet he could never get it to strike the limb at the angle he needed to cut it down.

Arik paused to take a breath, to get his bearings. It didn’t help that Tayaura was watching, and since the tree wasn’t an enemy, the Mask of the Fallen wasn’t giving him any added advantages either.

The pressure.

Arik ignored it, or at least he tried to as he envisioned what the sword could do. Was he too stiff to use something like this? Maybe the Whispering Sword wasn’t the right weapon for him. He suddenly regretted leaving the other blade behind in the tomb. At least with that sword, Arik could focus better—attacking initiative, waiting initiative, body-body initiative—all of it coming more naturally to him than it did when holding an unknown blade.

“I don’t… I don’t think I can do it. Yet,” he said, finally lowering his weapon. As he did, it morphed back into a single blade.

“I suspected so, disciple. This is why you will not be joining us, at least not yet.”

Arik looked at the master illusionist, stunned. “Wh-what?”

Hojo brought his hand to his chin and stroked his beard stubble. “You aren’t ready yet. Instead, you will go to Iga and discreetly find someone to train with. A warrior pilgrimage.”

“No, I…”

“It’s time that you utilize some of the skills I’ve taught you, and put yourself to the test as well. A week in Iga should be sufficient time for you to familiarize yourself with the blade. At least, I hope that is the case. I suspect we will need you at that point.”

Arik couldn’t help but feel disappointment in himself. Even if Hojo was right, Arik had automatically assumed that he would be going with the pair of illusionists. More and more, he was starting to identify as one of their kind, even if this was far from the case.

The disciple tried to hide the disappointment on his face by turning away and offering Hojo and his daughter a firm nod. “And I’ll come to meet you?”

Hojo shook his head. “No. One of us will find you in Iga.”

“I guess this is it then,” Arik said, instantly regretting the way he phrased this. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, we will part ways for now. I know that we have just woken up, but it would be best for us to get back onto a normal sleep schedule for the time being. This is good, all of this is good,” Hojo said as he tilted his head to his daughter, his face obscured as always by his conical hat. “I expect all of us to make progress. Let’s get some rest and take it from there.”

.Chapter Seven.

“Do not let the terror and the darkness rob you of your reason.”

–Master Nongrat Eldegai in his book A Healing Mind, Third Edition, Ezochi Revivaura Books, Year 1336, Page 94.

Arik knew that he shouldn’t have been surprised. He was, after all, staying with a pair of illusionists, a father and daughter who had worked and trained together in the past. Yet being dismissed, being sent to Iga, really got under his skin, especially with how things had gone the previous night.

Even more so with how the two illusionists had disappeared after he’d gone back to sleep after his failed demonstration with the Whispering Sword.

Now sitting at the table in the safe house, Arik once again read the message that Hojo had left him, the master illusionist also sketching out a crude map.

“I would have woken you, honest, disciple, but he asked me not to,” Meosa told him. “He said that you needed your rest. And there’s another thing…”

Meosa was across the table from Arik, seated as if he were human, the water spirit with his elbows on the table, leaving two wet spots, his head in his palms. A featureless face as always.

“What’s that?” Arik asked once Meosa didn’t elaborate.

“He debated giving you some money, but decided not to in the end. It’s on us to get some funds.”

Arik balled his hand into fists. “So we have nothing.”

“In a way, yes. You have whatever food you can scrounge up here, directions to Iga, and whatever you keep in your bag.”

Shinobi tools, the Coro Pache biography, the Mask of the Fallen… It was all Arik carried with him.

“I think he really meant it, disciple. And while I don’t necessarily agree with him leaving you penniless with a promise to find you at some point in a week, he has shown us how someone like him would operate, and maybe…” Meosa looked up at Arik. “Maybe it will be an adventure. A way to get our feet wet. Well, my feet are already wet, but you get what I’m saying. You have me, after all, a kami of renown. I wouldn’t worry much about money. If anything, I’ll just steal it from someone after half-drowning them. Kidding, I know that wouldn’t be something you would likely agree with. All I’m saying here is, we’ve got this. You and I. Things are different than they were when we first met.”

“Yeah?” Arik slowly started to nod.

“How hard can it be, my boy? It’s not like he said go to some random city and look for fights. Iga is literally known for warriors that come there hoping to fight. I know we have to keep your sword a secret, but I have a plan for that as well.”

“You do?” Arik asked.

After the discussion last night, he hadn’t given much thought to who he would challenge or what he would do once he reached the ancient capital of the Jade Realm.

“Of course, I do. It’s very clear to me, disciple. So don’t worry about that part either. Let’s just worry about getting to the city today and finding lodging. I shouldn’t have to tell you to keep a low profile and not go around healing people, but I’m telling you that anyway.”

“Do you think I should use a disguise?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary, but why not? The supposed illusionist said to do things his way, and you in a disguise allows me to do all the talking. And you know I love talking to humans, talking down to them, that is. Listen to me…” Meosa laughed at himself. “I’m actually excited we don’t have to be privy to the arguments those two are going to have over the next week. That Tayaura, ugh, a true shinobi-ess if there ever was one. If I don’t sound like a fan, it’s because I’m not a fan.”

“You think they’ll argue?”

“Think? I don’t think, disciple, I know. They were arguing this morning. Well, mostly her. If you haven’t noticed, Hojo rarely takes the bait. But that old master is stubborn in his own way, and if you ask me, you and I are dodging a flaming arrow not joining them as they finalize whatever harebrained scheme they plan to pull off. Let them argue and hash it out while you figure out how to use the sword. They’ll have a plan in a week’s time, I’m sure of it. And by then, you’ll be better at killing.”

Arik didn’t like the way that Meosa had framed this, but it was true. The Whispering Sword was a true instrument of death, and he had stopped thinking of what he was doing as unnecessary violence, keeping his overarching goal at the forefront. Stop Nobunaga. Stop the impending war between the Crimson and Onyx Realms. Avenge those he cared for. Save Mori Ehara and bring his sister back to the Onyx Realm.

“What kind of disguise would you like to take?”

“Well, you know how to make yourself look like a beggar, and we do have the tattered robes from the other day. I suppose that would be easiest. There’s always a clown, but that doesn’t seem like the right move here. You don’t really hold yourself in the right way to make it seem like you are the noble class. No offense, but bring your nicer robes anyway.”

“So a beggar.”

“Yes, the wretched make good disguises. This is exciting, disciple. Let’s go into it with that mindset. We will grow stronger, we won’t have to put up with Hojo and the shinobi-ess for a week, and we will still get to take part in the destruction of Nobunaga’s supply line. A win-win situation if there ever was one.”

“Yeah,” Arik said, nodding once again. Meosa had a point.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Eat something and let’s leave this dump. In fact, let’s make it a goal tonight to con our way into a nice hotel. What do you say?”

“While looking like a vagrant?”

“Well, at first, yes, but then we will get some sen, clean up in an alley, and find a nice bed for the evening. A bath for you, and maybe some entertainment for both of us. What’s not to love here?”

“Entertainment?”

“Yes, a personal bard, or maybe some dancers. Let’s live it up, disciple!” Meosa’s form began to grow in size.

“I don’t know about that last part, but sure. Let’s see what we can do together.”

****

While Arik looked the part of the beggar, he didn’t need to travel in such a way, at least for the first several hours between the safe house and Iga. The terrain was mostly rocky, but soon it shifted as a coniferous forest took shape, Arik glad to be shaded from the sun for a spell. He wore his haori cape over his head, but even with that he could feel the heat, the disciple keenly aware that his makeup could run if he sweated too much.

This thought brought a smile to his face. Never in his life did he think he would be at a stage where he needed to worry about something like runny make-up, yet that too was part of who he had become.

And Arik felt that he was getting better at it.

In watching Hojo, he had picked up on some techniques that helped him sell the part. From the way his hair was now stained with white paint to the blending of darkened make-up with precision so he didn’t appear to be wearing some sort of costume—it all came together with his tattered robes, and the limp he would take on once he reached the city limits, a limp that Arik could sell best with a true injury.

Self-harm was far from his favorite part of his training at the School of Illusion, yet it was something he had learned to stomach and excel at, the disciple taking no joy in doing things like breaking his own fingers or drawing blood. Even worse was what he had once had to do with stones to his kneecaps, Arik remembering how excruciating the pain had been as he waited until he had received permission to attend to his wounds.

He planned to do something similar once he reached Iga, albeit only one knee, so he could sell his disability better. This would also require him to use his sheathed sword to set his leg and stabilize it, Arik already mentally preparing for not only the action, but the fact that he was going to have to deny himself from healing it until they were in a better place for him to change his disguise.

From one illusion to another…

They reached the point where he needed to fully adopt his disguise. Arik and Meosa came to a bluff that overlooked Iga, the city partially hidden by the same fog that would obscure the Valleys of the Unknown, rock formations lifting from the mist and reaching toward the heavens. Arik instantly saw the telltale sign of abandoned quarries alongside ancient cliff dwellings carved into the rock face. He assumed they were quarries like the ones they passed where the Jade Realm was able to mine explosive materials, the kind that Nobunaga wanted.

“Just one more thing,” Arik told Meosa as he began looking for a stone with which he would do the deed. He found one and lifted it with both hands, feeling its weight.

“I cannot watch this,” Meosa said.

“I’ll be able to fix it.”

Arik got down on one knee and used another stone to prop his left leg up.

With a deep breath out he used both hands to bring the rock down onto his knee, instantly feeling the break, the flashbacks to similar injuries he had given himself at the Academy of Healing Arts leaving as quickly as they came. He tossed the rock to the side and ignored the Revivaura all around him, as if the chi itself sensed that he needed help.

Arik got to one foot and used his sheathed sword as a splint, wrapping it around his leg with the sanjaku cloth. To anyone that saw him, it would look like he had found a scabbard and used it to set his leg.

“That should do it,” he said, breathing through the pain until he got used to it. A crutch would help, and as Arik slowly limped toward the city, he found a branch thick enough that it would help him stabilize his weight.

“I knew we were going to take this to the extreme, disciple, but…”

“Hojo said to practice,” Arik said, a hint of bitterness to his voice. While he halfway agreed with Meosa’s earlier argument about avoiding any family conflict between the two illusionists, he still felt left out. It was human nature, really, even if Arik knew it was best for him to hone his craft over the next week.

Walking with his makeshift crutch and his broken kneecap doubled the time it took for Arik to reach the ancient city gates, which matched the same color of the rock that surrounded Iga. He recalled that the warrior pilgrimages were mostly hosted in one quadrant of the city, in locations specifically designed for audiences to watch a combat that took place. The disciple turned in that direction, keeping his head down, his face mostly covered.

When he did look up, Arik tried to find signs that the Crimson Realm had moved into the city, yet all he saw were Jadean flags and people that didn’t have the same hardened looks and strange hats as the desert dwellers of the south, still a foreign environment for him, but more similar to the north.

A grunting wooly kayno caught his attention, its owner trying to move the stubborn beast by pulling at a rope hooked to a ring through its snout. Arik could smell the pack animal, a scent soon replaced by the sickly sweet smell of an open-air butcher, carcasses buzzing with flies, attached to wooden rods that were dug into the ground.

“Wonderful, isn’t it? I’ve always enjoyed the sights and sounds of civilization, not to mention the smells,” Meosa said so that only Arik could hear him.

They needed money, and Arik wasn’t the type to steal it.

He thought about what Hojo and he had done outside of Moonagwa, how the two of them had put on a show. He wasn’t really dressed for that kind of occasion, even if he had Meosa to make it seem as if Arik was performing water magic. He could always find an odd job, but his current disguise would limit what he would physically be able to do.

The more Arik thought of it, the more he realized that he had likely gone with an incorrect disguise. Even if Meosa had teased him, going as some sort of noble would have at least allowed him to get credit somewhere, or take a job to earn room and board for the night.

“This spot will do,” Meosa said, Arik seeing that they had come to a crossroads between the area of the city where there were warrior pilgrimages and the market they had just passed.

“Do for what?”

“Put your hand out, disciple. This is how we are going to get money.”

“You actually want me to beg?”

“Are you too good to ask for a handout? Watch and learn.” Meosa changed his voice and began calling out to the people around them: “Please, I beg of you, a wooly kayno crushed my pathetic knee. I was merely trying to milk it while it was sleeping. Help me!”

Is he making a mockery of this? Arik thought, his face distorting.

“Keep your head down, disciple,” Meosa hissed at Arik before going with the same story, this time elaborating even further. Soon, people began stopping in front of Arik, rummaging around for coins and flicking them in his direction. As they did, Meosa’s story grew more absurd:

“I am a nobleman from Avarga, I swear, but a poor wooly kayno milking fool who lost all of his money to a wool seamstress! This is a crime of fashion, I mean passion! Milking is not to be done with one’s lips! Wooly kayno are not pillowers!”

Some of Meosa’s statement drew chuckles, others drew angry quips. Meosa heckled right back at anyone who dared aim their forked tongue at the aqueous kami. Arik collected the money every time it came, and soon, his pockets were filled with coins. He even had a few of the bills they used in the Jade Realm.

“See?” Meosa told him. “I told you I would get us some money.”

“I don’t know how I feel about begging…”

“Bah! Get over yourself. It was that, or rob someone.”

“We could have offered to do chores or something.”

“In your condition? Surely you know how foolish you sound.”

Arik turned toward the pilgrimage district, and merged back into the crowd around them: “I’m just saying: we should have gone for a different disguise.”

“And what? Spend the rest of the afternoon scrubbing someone’s floor? No, that is beneath us! This is exactly what we needed to do, disciple. And now, we need to double or triple what we have. No, let’s quadruple it.”

“How?”

“Gambling, my boy. I obviously know some of the card games they play in the Jade Realm. If I don’t, you can ask for the rules and people will see you as an easy target. But they won’t know about me. We will win and then move on before someone gets suspicious. Tavern to tavern. By nightfall, we will have enough money for a fancy hotel, and we will find one with a private entrance. After you have changed your appearance, of course. Finally, tomorrow we will enact the second part of the plan, which is your combat training. Although, we may need to go back to gamble from time to time just to increase our funds.”

Arik was beyond the point that he was going to argue with Meosa’s logic. It made sense, and it would be utilizing what Hojo had taught him to some degree as well. In the end, it was still deception, and there was nothing wrong with him using Meosa to not only further his disguises, but aid him in deceiving the people around him.

With this in mind, Arik offered Meosa a firm nod as they continued to the crowd. “Lead the way.”

“Are you sure? I was certain you would put up more of a protest.”

“No protest from me. Let’s make the best of this minor infiltration.”

Arik felt a watery hand slap him on the back. “That’s the spirit, disciple. I’ll make a decent young man out of you yet!”

Part Three

.Chapter One.

“Awake early if you desire another man’s life or land. Better yet, never go to sleep in the first place.”

–Combat Master Rai Dalanzad from his battle treaty The Three Rings, Third Edition, Yoshimura Books, Year 1429, Page 185.

Arik Dacre threw his arms out and fell backward onto the bed, laughing. The room was unlike any he had ever stayed in, with vaulted ceilings, a bed large enough for several people, and a lush separate sitting area partitioned off by a waist-high wall. There was also a tub, one that Meosa was sloshing around in.

Arik had already cleaned up as well, the disciple healed from his earlier knee injury and glad to have fresh robes and a warm bath for once. All that was left was an evening meal, one that would come any minute now.

“I could get used to this,” Arik said, his hands now behind his head. “I really could.”

“Yeah, you could.” Meosa laughed. “And would you look at all that money?”

There was barely enough room in his satchel to carry the money, not with his shinobi tools, Coro Pache’s book, and Mask of the Fallen inside. This was why the sen was now on a side table in the sitting area, Arik planning to sort it out later. They had earned quite a bit, the duo going to several taverns and tripling their money each time.

“We could just do this, you know. Spend the rest of your life growing richer and richer. Imagine it with me, disciple. An estate in Katano for winter, a flat in Avarga for the spring. We could spend the summers in Moonagwa, or at a quaint little beach house in Katano. Yes. Yes! Maybe we would even buy a place here in Iga for the fall festivals. They are great, you know. And harvest season here is something else. All the food flows through Iga, the old saying goes, as it heads west and south. Or at least it used to.”

“We probably shouldn’t…”

“I know, I know. Revenge mission, rescue your sister, meet up with the supposed illusionist and his dimwitted daughter. I’m just saying, it is something to consider. With enough money, it doesn’t matter if the three realms go to war. You understand that, right? This is the problem with the human world. With enough money, nothing matters.”

“No, I don’t feel that way.”

“Bah. I figured you would say something like that. Not that I can blame you, considering what happened to your family. But there is something to be said about the currencies that humans give value to. And I would say that there is even a sum that you could use to buy back your sister.”

Arik sat up, not liking where this conversation was going.

“What? Don’t look at me like that. Hear me out, my boy! First, we earn more money. Then you present yourself to Nobunaga as a man who has gained riches relatively quickly— all that information can be faked, you know— and then, we use the audience you get with him to not only kill the warlord, but retrieve your sister, and keep our money in the end. Wouldn’t that be the Hidden Warrior way? You are a fledging young shinobi, are you do not?”

A knock at the door cut the conversation short. Arik answered it to find a man and a woman who worked at the hotel. The two brought several platters of food into the room, placed it on a table in the center and quickly left.

“You probably shouldn’t have all that cash out when the helpers are present,” Meosa told Arik, his voice in his ear again.

Arik ignored the kami as the hotel employees began arranging the platters of food. He hadn’t actually chosen what was ordered for him, the disciple simply letting Meosa speak to the staff downstairs. He regretted it once he saw everything they had brought. He was hungry, sure, but it was enough food for twelve men, everything from roasted pig to pots of boiling soup and various breads and cheeses.

“I don’t need this much food,” Arik said once the waitstaff was gone.

“Then don’t eat it. I don’t care,” Meosa said, who was instantly back in the tub, splashing around. “I wanted you to feel what it was like to be royalty. It was something that I used to experience quite a bit, you know. The finer things in life, disciple. They are the finer things for a reason, and once you have tasted them…” His water form slouched a bit. “Well, I believe that is the worst part of it.”

“What is?” Arik asked as he began picking at some of the meat and cheese.

“Once you have tasted it, you definitely know what you are lacking once it all dries up. You think this is luxury? You should have seen me back then, disciple. I almost wish you had seen me, honestly, so you would realize how much I have been roughing it with you and the supposed illusionist. Not to mention the time I spent in that wretched cave.”

“Sorry things have been hard for you.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sincere or not.”

Arik walked to the other side of the room and stepped out onto the balcony, the evening air greeting him as he continued to pick at his plate. They weren’t far from where he had started begging, Arik now seeing through the light of a few lanterns that there were other beggars there—a woman with her child, a man.

He finished eating and went back inside.

“Ready for more?”

“I need you to deliver this food to some people.”

“Come again?”

“There’s a family down there, begging. Bring this food down to them.”

“So food just magically appears from the sky? Is that what you are suggesting?” Meosa shook out his water form. “We are supposed to be in disguise, disciple. Disguise!”

“Then I will call the hotel staff. They can deliver it.”

“Now, you are thinking. Don’t make me do things that would reveal us to someone who may be watching, and certainly don’t make me do things that a peasant could do in my place. While the supposed illusionist and the shinobi-ess may be the last of their kind, Sengum Minamoto is proof that not only are there others like them, but likely some that he himself has trained. What I’m saying is that someone may be watching, especially as close as we are to this supply line.”

“You aren’t wrong.”

Meosa laughed. “I’m rarely wrong. I’ve been at this for a while, disciple. Never forget that. Now, finish what you are going to eat, and then donate the rest to the poor.”

“I think… I will go down there myself and make sure they don’t have any injuries.”

“Why did I feel like you would say something like that?” Meosa splashed around yet again. “Absolutely not.”

“I’ll cover my face.”

“No, disciple. I understand that you want to help, but that is taking it too far. A rich nobleman taking pity on the paupers outside his window is one thing, but sneaking out and healing people may lead to our discovery. So no, that is where I draw the line. If you try to do it, I will make it so that you can’t leave this room.”

Arik sat down on one of the couches and looked at all of the food, the smells coming to him. “Fine, I’ll eat a little more, and then have the help staff take it away. And I won’t go out and heal people. Happy?”

Meosa splashed around again. “I suppose you could say I’m happy to see that, for once, you can be reasoned with. Now, stop interrupting my bath. I’m trying to relax over here.”

****

Arik couldn’t remember the last time he slept so well, the disciple waking up the next morning completely refreshed and ready to begin his training. Meosa had detailed his plans with him the previous night, Arik figuring it would be worth a shot. If the man he hoped would train him wasn’t available, he could try to find someone else.

The last time Arik had come to Iga, he had taken part in four warrior pilgrimages.

One had been against a Crimson swordsman named Tatum, whom Arik had later encountered in the Mogra tournament, and who now likely worked for Nobunaga. There had been Nyoko, a female axe-bearer from the mountains of the Jade Realm, and Istvan, clearly from the Onyx Realm, who seemed to have had some capacity for healing due to the fire hammer that he used which constantly burned him.

Finally there had been Akamatsu, a retired Crimsonian blade in his sixties.

This was whom Meosa had suggested Arik find, the disciple recalling that Akamatsu had mentioned once they had finished that there may be a time in which they train again. Arik also recalled that the combat master had insisted upon using wooden weapons, which wouldn’t quite suit what he hoped to learn from the Whispering Sword. But it was at least a start, and perhaps the seasoned warrior would consider training him with real weapons.

Arik ate some of the dried meat from the previous night for his morning meal, the disciple not wanting to have too much in his stomach once the training began. He no longer wore a disguise as he left the room, Arik not wanting anything to encumber him once he found Akamatsu.

As he stepped into the hallway, Arik noticed that the door across from him was propped open, the disciple seeing a man he had just been thinking of, Istvan, seated before a plate of food. Hunched over, Istvan was shirtless with a haori cape draped over his shoulders, his head completely shaven, no eyebrows, and no facial hair.

He looked up at Arik.

“I remember him,” Meosa said so only Arik could hear.

“I didn’t know you were staying here,” Istvan said in a jovial way, his voice deep and kind. Arik had never spoken to him before. He didn’t expect there to be a comical tone behind his words, the Onyxian man now with a big grin on his face.

Arik recalled what it had been like fighting against him, the heat of his weapon. He saw Istvan’s hammer as well, which was on the ground, its white-leather gripped handle jutting up into the air. His eyes jumped from the weapon to Istvan himself, the burn scars on his arms and chest visible.

“Istvan, right?”

“Last I checked. And you? I never did get your name.”

“Arik Dacre.”

“You’re from the north?”

“I am.”

“And you are here on pilgrimage again?”

Arik nodded, realizing that he needed to be careful not to reveal too much.

“That’s good to hear. Not enough Northerners here in Iga, I’ll tell you that. There’ve been a horde of Crimsonians recently,” Istvan said, the smile on his face dropping into a thin line. “They are up to something. A few have offered challenges but most just seem to be passing through. Good challenges, I’d say, but none that my hammer can’t handle.” Istvan laughed at a joke that didn’t quite land. “It always feels good to legally kill a Crimsonian. Between you and me, of course.”

“Of course.”

“What brings you here this time? Are you looking for a rematch?”

“Not exactly,” Arik said as Meosa whispered the word ‘careful’ in his ear.

“That’s probably a good thing for me.” Istvan laughed again. “It isn’t often that someone defeats me, and I’m only glad that you didn’t decide to finish what you had started. We should have a meal sometime, if you would be up for it. Like I said, it is often that I meet someone from our realm here. Where are you from exactly?”

“Sunocea.”

“Ah, Sunocea. Quiet there, nice beaches. I’m from Austere. The border. Anyway. I’ve been staying in this room for some time—they give me a good monthly rate—so feel free to stop by whenever you’d like. Perhaps we can have that meal too.”

Arik nodded.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Good luck with whatever you’re getting into today. I’ve got one challenge lined up, and then hopefully, some rest.” Istvan shoveled a fried egg into his mouth and swallowed it down. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

****

Meosa had a much better memory than Arik could have imagined, the aqueous kami guiding the disciple to the very courtyard he had once fought Akamatsu in. Sure enough, there was a sign out front, Arik instantly familiar with the place where he had once challenged the seasoned warrior. As it had been before, wooden weapons were lying about, Akamatsu standing in the shade and stretching his arms out wide.

Bald on the top, the hair on the sides and the back of his skull were braided into a single strand that was tied off by a red band. Akamatsu wore his robes open at the front, the older man looking up as the disciple approached.

“You have come back for another challenge.” He motioned to the wooden weapons that were lying about. There were just a few people in the stands surrounding the courtyard, one of the men resting on his side. Arik glanced from the potential spectators to Akamatsu.

“Do you have somewhere private where we can train?” Arik asked.

“Private? Is this not private enough? Grab a weapon, young man. Or two. You feel like dual wielding today?” The grizzled veteran huffed. “Somewhere more private, huh? Do I look like I am made of money? This is the best courtyard I can afford. You know the rent on this place? Bargh. I swear, you young blades are all alike, all thinking they are destined for money and glory. A private courtyard? Yamachichi balls! I could rent one, if I wanted to use my pension for the rest of the year. This is what I have. Take it or leave it.”

Rather than respond, Arik drew the Whispering Sword.

Akamatsu didn’t flinch. “You’re threatening me?”

“The reason I asked for a place where we can do this privately is because of this.” His back to the handful of spectators, Arik willed the Whispering Sword to come alive. He felt the buzzing in his hand, and as he did the tip of the blade began to split and curl upward, like the tail of a mermaid.

“Heh,” was Akamatsu’s only response.

The Whispering Sword formed into a solid piece yet again and Arik returned it to its scabbard.

“Where would a novice like you get a blade like that?”

“Can you train me to use it or not?”

“A whip sword. I have seen something like that before, only once. It would sort of be like using a flail, yet…” Akamatsu brought his hand to his chin and stroked his beard stubble. “How is it activated?”

“Chi.”

“You can use Thunderaura?”

“I’ve dabbled.”

Akamatsu’s eyes darted left and right. “And you don’t want other people to know about it.”

“That’s right.”

“How much sen do you have?”

“Enough. And I can get more money, if that’s what you want.”

“You can get more, huh? Do you trust me to hold the blade?”

Arik hesitated.

“Don’t forget I’m here, disciple. If he tries anything…”

“I trust you,” Arik told Akamatsu.

“Good. I’ll have a go later then. Return tonight with…” Akamatsu squinted up at the sky for a moment, calculating his fees. “Five thousand sen. You know what? Make it ten.”

Yet again, Meosa spoke so only Arik could hear: “Tell him to make it seven, and you will pay for his room and board for the next week while he trains you.”

“Make it seven and I’ll… I’ll pay for your room and board for the next week while you train me. I’m staying at a nice hotel. I can get you a room there.”

Akamatsu nodded as he considered this. “A nice hotel, huh? It would probably beat the shabby basement room at the tavern I’m currently staying at.”

“It probably would.”

“Seven thousand sen for tonight’s lesson. We will see how you do, and make adjustments from there. A week, you say?”

“Actually, I have six days.”

Akamatsu bowed at Arik. “Then you have yourself a deal, young man. I will see you here tonight. Now, go.” The veteran blade turned away from Arik and began stretching again, both of his hands on his lower back now as he tilted his neck back.

“We will need to get more money at some point,” Arik told Meosa once they left the courtyard.

“Don’t you worry about that part. We have enough for now, and I’ll negotiate the cost of the room for him. That said, you are right that more money won’t hurt us going forward. Who knows who we will need to bribe by the end of all of this, including your new instructor. That settles it. Let’s head back to the hotel, get a disguise going, and then move to the other side of town, where the mansions are. There will be more money to burn over there, believe me, disciple.”

.Chapter Two.

“A good neighbor often spies.”

–A quote attributed to Hidden Warrior Sorgus de Moonagwa, as told to his last student, Boten de Moonagwa, who later founded the Katano School of Illusion.

Akamatsu was waiting in the courtyard just as he said he would be, the older warrior seated amidst his wooden weapons, surrounded by several dummies that had been stuffed with straw. Arik noticed that they looked like some of the scarecrows he had passed the day prior, near the vineyards on the northern side of Iga, and he briefly wondered how Akamatsu had retrieved them.

“I have your money, and I’ve arranged a room for you.” Arik told him which hotel he was staying at, Akamatsu merely nodding.

“Give him the cash, disciple,” Meosa told Arik once the old blade remained seated. Arik produced the sen and handed it to Akamatsu in a respectful way, who wasted no time in counting it.

“Good.” He rolled onto his back and hopped to his feet, light as ever. “Set up our targets for the night. Once you do, let me see the weapon. Actually, let me see it now while you set them up.”

Arik only hesitated for a moment before handing over the Whispering Sword.

Akamatsu began looking it over, the blade still in its scabbard. “Wonderful… such fine craftsmanship…”

Arik tried not to be distracted by Akamatsu’s practice movements as the disciple set up the four targets. There was some lighting in the courtyard, mostly from the lanterns that Akamatsu had placed around the perimeter, but also from a cloudless sky, stars shining bright, the moon visible.

Arik was just finished setting up the second straw target when he heard that familiar whispering sound. He looked back to Akamatsu to see that the Whispering Sword was now limp, its blade drooping to the ground.

“I see…” Akamatsu said, continuing to turn the grip around in his hand.

“I truly hope this is a good idea…” Meosa told Arik as he moved to set up the next target.

“This was your plan.”

“But I’m not the one that enacted it. Ha! How about that argument? Almost as bad as the argument from the fellow that we beat earlier in a game of cups. And he thought he was going to win it all, that we would have pity on him. Instead…”

More whispering sounds came to Arik as he recalled what had happened, the gambler pleading to bet against him again one final time after Arik had won all the money on the table. He didn’t take the bet, even though Meosa told him he should have, the disciple seeing true desperation in the gambler’s eyes. This was yet another thing he couldn’t heal through Revivaura—addiction and greed.

Arik was just finishing setting up the fourth straw target when Akamatsu spoke: “You know who had a sword like this, don’t you?”

“Coro Pache.”

“Yes, a true hero. Let me ask you, and please try to be honest with me here. Where did you come across this blade?”

“I won it,” Arik said, going with a story that Meosa had concocted for them earlier, just in case he was asked. “There was a tournament in the South, in Mogra, and it was the main prize.”

“A fine prize indeed. It isn’t often you find weapons crafted from Yokaura.”

“So you know about that?”

Akamatsu laughed in a bitter way. “Yes, I know about it, and this isn’t the first time I’ve come across it. Anytime you see an enchanted weapon, the odds are high that Yokaura is involved.”

Arik thought back to Istvan’s hammer, how it was able to ignite. Is his hammer made out of Yokaura too?

“Give me a moment to understand how to use such a weapon; then I should be able to train you with it.”

“Confident, much?” Meosa whispered to Arik as Akamatsu stepped in the center of the courtyard.

The combat veteran motioned for Arik to step outside of the perimeter, gesturing yet again for Arik to move even further back. Once the disciple did so, Akamatsu began his practice run.

It took him a few attempts, but soon, he truly was using the weapon as a whip sword, small cuts tracing across the leather tunics of the stuffed targets, hay pressing out. Even though the targets were all about ten feet away from him, Akamatsu was able to engage each of them, the man a whirlwind of energy by the time he started to slow.

Dust fell to the ground as he finally lowered the Whispering Sword.

“Exhilarating. Tonight we will work on just attacking one target at a time,” he said as he caught his breath. “As I suspected, you must think of this sword as an extension of your own being. Don’t think of the length that it can go, or what it’s actually doing, and don’t be enchanted by the buzzing sensation or the liquid blade itself. The only thing that you should be concerned with is striking your target.”

The Whispering Sword morphed back into one solid piece and the grizzled veteran handed it off. Once Arik had the weapon again, he stepped to where Akamatsu had been standing.

“Tonight and tomorrow night, we will train on this. The following day we will train with your weapon as it is, as a sword. In fact, we’ll use wooden weapons on that day. That night we will continue to work with the whip aspect of this weapon. We will reassess from there. You have more money, yes?”

Arik nodded. Over the course of the day, he had been able to garner close to twenty thousand sen with Meosa’s help, which was apparently quite the sum.

“Excellent. I’m no sellsword, don’t get the wrong idea. While I may have dealt with a good many mercenaries, I do not count myself among them. But…” He hesitated, as if he had already said too much, but exhaled deeply and continued. “As you can tell, things may not have worked out the way that I hoped they would. So here I am, and here you are, the recipient of the sword that some would say a person like you shouldn’t possess.”

“A person like me? What do you mean?”

“You aren’t Crimsonian, young man, yet you hold what is clearly a legendary weapon. You have some understanding of chi, but you don’t seem to be the type that would have studied at the School of Illusion. Then again, if you were a master of Chimaura, then I likely wouldn’t know. This leads me to believe there is another form of chi you may have some knowledge of.”

“Oh?”

Akamatsu laughed. “Perhaps, and perhaps you believe that like some of my countrymen I have a distaste for those from the Onyx Realm. That is not the case. I’ve spent time on the border, and was once married to an Onyxian woman. But that was a lifetime ago, none of that matters now. As long as you can activate the sword, then we should be able to work with what we have. After all, chi is chi. Now, strike the first target.”

It wasn’t quite inspiration that Arik took from Akamatsu’s words, but he did recognize something akin to a teacher’s encouragement as he brought the Whispering Sword to the ready.

As it had before, the weapon grew slack in his hand.

An extension of my being… Arik thought, then he remembered what Hojo had taught him, to not think too much. He saw the target, and he envisioned himself striking it.

His first few attempts were sloppy, the Whispering Sword never going all that far.

But as Arik continued to let go of his own control, he built up steam with his movements, finally able to send the split blade forward, lacerating two sides of the target before returning to them.

“Exactly that. Let’s try again and soon, I want you to attempt chaining the attack from one target to the next. As you can tell, this is going to do a lot of damage to our dummies, but that’s okay. You don’t have anything to do tomorrow aside from sew them back up, do you?”

“No, I suppose not,” Arik said, feeling confident.

“Good. Then let’s continue. I’ll make a Crimsonian out of you yet.”

****

Arik had never trained for an entire night, the disciple surprised at how quickly the time had passed. They had only taken one break for Akamatsu to have some bread and water. Other than that, the older man had been relentless in his instruction.

“Let’s gather the targets,” he told Arik at the crack of dawn, “and head back to the hotel. I hope you have a needle and thread.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Arik said as he went for the first straw target, the clothing of which had been torn to ribbons. Rather than stitch it up, he planned to buy new clothing for it, to be placed on top of what had already been crafted and then stitched at the hems. He would have to be careful with some of the hay, but it could always be stuffed back in and patched up.

After he had two of the straw targets, and Akamatsu had the other pair, Arik led him back to his posh hotel. The Crimsonian blade paid little attention to the doorman or the lavish environment as he dropped the two targets at the foot of the stairs. “Where am I staying?”

“At the end of the hallway, there,” Arik said as he gestured his chin toward the room. “They said it was the quietest room in the hotel. I figured you would want your rest.”

“You figured right, young man. And my sleep. I wouldn’t mind that. Never do seem to get enough.” Akamatsu yawned, which stretched the scar on his face. “I haven’t trained that hard since I was just about your age. Well, a few years older than you. The blades in the South have gone soft in my opinion; overnight training is all but phased out by the various combat branches. It builds character, if you ask me, and it prepares you for the restless nights to follow. Anyway, enough going on about the old days. Get some rest. I’ll see you here tonight.” He gestured toward the foot of the stairs. “With the dummies.”

“Well, I can say one thing,” Meosa told Arik once Akamatsu had left for his room, “I like him better than Hojo.”

“Really?”

Arik realized that he was just a bit too loud, especially in the way that the staff member at the front desk looked up at him.

We can discuss this later, he thought as he began dragging two of the combat dummies upstairs. He tried not to hit each step, but wasn’t as graceful as he would have liked to be. After setting them in his room, he returned downstairs to grab the other two, Meosa reminding Arik that he could easily have the hotel staff do it for him.

“I’ve got it.” Arik was just about to enter his room with the two additional straw targets when the door across from his popped open.

“So, you were training,” said Istvan, who wore his robes today completely open, his chiseled chest and abdomen visible. “I wondered what you were up to. I knocked on your door last night, figured we could have a drink of sorts and talk about the Onyx Realm, our home. Sorry if I seem nostalgic.” Istvan laughed. “It has been ages since I’ve met someone from our realm.”

“No, it’s fine. I will be out most nights,” Arik said, instantly regretting the way that he phrased this. It naturally made someone want to ask what he was up to. He should have said it was fine and just leave it at that, something Meosa scolded him about as Istvan continued.

“Out most nights, huh? What are you up to exactly? Are there some midnight tournaments going that I don’t know about? If so, I would love to join. When I first got here, they had plenty of those, but there have been less as of late.”

“Midnight tournaments? No. Just training, that’s all. No tournaments.”

“Interesting. And you did that to those dummies?” Istvan asked.

Arik looked down at the two targets that he was holding, which were cut pretty badly, straw sticking out every which way.

“I did.”

Istvan ran his tongue inside his right cheek as he examined the straw targets once again. “Are you a dual wielder? I seem to remember you only having one sword.”

“In this conversation, disciple, the less you reveal the better.”

“Just this one,” Arik said, taking Meosa’s advice as he placed his hand on the grip of the Whispering Sword. “Anyway, I need to get some rest. It was nice seeing you. Good luck in your tournaments today.”

Istvan offered Arik a firm smile. “Thank you. The challenger is an axe wielder out of the western mountains of the Jade Realm.”

“Moonagwa, likely,” said Arik.

“Likely. Well, if you see me tomorrow morning, that means that I survived. She has challenged me before, several times, in fact. She doesn’t give up, but she does get stronger with each challenge and I like that about her. It keeps me on my toes. Her name is Nyoko. Ever heard of her?”

Arik slowly nodded his head, recalling that he had once faced off against her as well. “Good luck.”

“Same to you and your training. Hopefully we can have breakfast or something soon. I’d love to hear about your journeys here in the Jade Realm, and I’d love to talk about our home country. Truly. Like I said, it’s not often I meet someone like me.”

.Chapter Three.

“I pray the words I leave behind inspire the best in my future readership.”

–Master Nongrat Eldegai in his book A Healing Mind, Third Edition, Ezochi Revivaura Books, Year 1336, Page 134.

The following day flew by as Arik dealt with the combat dummies and made a bit more money through gambling. It wasn’t until the end of his training the next morning, as he walked back to the hotel with Akamatsu, that he thought about Hojo and Tayaura. The two illusionists had been his sole focus, and now they seemed so distant to him.

Where that journey would go next was anyone’s guess.

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” Akamatsu said once they reached the hotel, both Arik and the combat veteran holding the straw dummies that would need to be repaired yet again.

Arik gulped. “A few hours?”

“Yes. How about four hours from now? No, five. How about five? I told you that we needed to work on your basic sword skills, and that is something we can do during the day. Then, we will rest for a few hours and train overnight again.” Akamatsu smiled. “That is, after all, what you are paying me for, is it not?”

Arik nodded. He had since paid Akamatsu another seven thousand sen.

“And thrilling work today, young man. You are getting better.”

This much Arik could feel.

On his first night training, he had ultimately been able to strike the dummies, but it was difficult for him to chain attacks together using the Whispering Sword. Now he was at the point that this was starting to feel more fluid, Arik becoming more and more comfortable with the lethality of his whip-like weapon and unleashing a tsunami of strikes.

It truly was a remarkable blade, and he had been doing all of his training without wearing the Mask of the Fallen, an element he perhaps would introduce soon, if he could truly trust Akamatsu.

Once again, Istvan opened his door just as Arik was lugging the other two straw dummies up to his room.

“How did it go?”

“It went well.”

Istvan looked at one of the dummies over yet again. “I’ll say. That is some sword work.”

“It gets pretty intense, the training.”

“Do you have a minute? Would you care for breakfast?” Istvan smiled at him. “I ordered enough for two people.”

Should I eat? Arik waited for Meosa to respond. When he didn’t, the disciple shrugged at Istvan, figuring it couldn’t hurt.

“Just be wary of what you tell him,” Meosa said, finally making his feelings known.

Arik finished placing the combat dummy in his room and joined Istvan. The Onyxian man had ordered a feast and a half, enough food for more than two people, and more than Arik had seen the last two mornings, meaning that he had been waiting to invite Arik to eat with him.

“What a place, right? Iga.”

Arik nodded. “It certainly is.”

“And meeting someone like you here, like me.”

There he is again with that reference, Arik thought as he sat down with a plate. Because he had training in a few hours, he decided to mostly stock up on proteins—eggs and meat, just a single slice of bread.

Istvan continued his murmurings. “Someone from the north, like me. Someone who understands Revivaura.”

“Careful,” Meosa reminded Arik.

“You mean your power to heal your burns?” It was one of the first things Arik had noticed in his trial against Istvan. Regardless of his scars, the flames of his hammer didn’t seem to hurt Istvan. The only way for him to do something like that would be to utilize Revivaura.

“Among other things. I have no shame in admitting that I was once a disciple.”

“You were?”

Istvan bit his lip. “I didn’t last very long, and only made it through the Faithful Branch of Common Restoration. I dropped out before I got to the Devout Branch of Regrowth. Family issues, namely my late father needing me to help run his shop after he became ill. I stuck around after that.”

“And you really didn’t go back after?”

Istvan sighed. “No. Like I said, I stuck around. I had other family members I needed to care for, although that is no longer a problem.”

Arik didn’t press him on what he may have meant by this.

“I recall there being a higher branch, one in particular that revolved around wound transfer. I always found that particular skill interesting.” Istvan looked at Arik curiously. “What kind of person would study that? What kind of person would want to absorb someone else’s wound? And if they could absorb it, could they redistribute it as well? Is that even a possibility?”

Arik looked away. This was how he had bested Istvan in their match. The muscled hammer user was fast, and one strike from his flaming weapon would have been difficult for him to recover from.

Once Arik didn’t respond, Istvan spoke again: “I’ve been thinking a lot about that, you know. If someone could absorb a wound, what else could they do with it once they held it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought much about that.”

“So you have never heard of the power?”

“Of Revivaura? Of course I’ve heard of Revivaura. I’m from the north. Same as you.”

“And were you tested as a child?”

“Everyone was tested.”

“And did you go to one of the academies?”

“I lived near one,” Arik said, which wasn’t exactly a lie. “Anyway, I have training in a few hours. Believe it or not, I have overnight training, and now my instructor wants to work on something in a few hours as well. It’s going to be a long, long day.” He stood and approached the door before finally turning back to Istvan. “Thanks for the breakfast.”

“It was my pleasure. Hopefully, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Arik was stepping into the hallway when he paused. He turned back to Istvan once again. “How did your match go against that woman who keeps challenging you?”

“Nyoko? Heh. She lost again. But she’ll try for another in a few weeks. That’s how it goes with her.”

“Good to know, good to know.”

****

Putting himself in a training phase allowed Arik to disregard some of the things happening around, dampening his natural curiosity, and even the urge he had to continually suppress to charge south to rescue his sister.

The only way that was going to happen was if he got stronger.

This was why he found himself in the courtyard several hours later under a blazing summer sun holding a wooden sword, Akamatsu standing across from him also with a wooden weapon, the retired fighter gripping a staff.

“Come at me when you are ready.”

Arik didn’t hesitate. He was trying to grow more confident in his attacks, the disciple instantly swooping forward, and doing so without thinking too deeply about how he was going to attack Akamatsu. With the range provided by the combat veteran’s staff, the man was easily able to block Arik’s attacks. There were more than a handful of times where Akamatsu gracefully swept Arik’s feet out from beneath him, Arik hitting the cobbled stone, the breath knocked out of him.

He got back to his feet after every attempt, prepared to strike yet again.

How do I deal with a staff?

Every time he went for an attack, Akamatsu was able to force him to keep his distance. If this were a real fight, Arik could rely on Meosa to help him, or he could do something like getting close enough to latch onto Akamatsu’s arm and transfer whatever injuries he had sustained.

One-Count Strike…

To counteract his instructor, Arik decided to go for it as Hojo had taught him, the disciple gathering his energy and sending it out in his next strike. Once again, Akamatsu blocked his attack, the Crimsonian blade gritting his teeth as he took a step back, a small, yet definitely noticeable, wave of force moving past him.

“Wh-where did you learn to do that?”

Arik lowered his weapon and averted eye contact. “Someone taught me.”

“The man that was with you the last time?”

Arik couldn’t recall if Hojo had actually conversed with Akamatsu or not, but he was definitely there watching in the crowd when they had first faced off.

“You aren’t going to answer me?” Akamatsu started to laugh. “Secretive, you are. But that is something I have seen on numerous occasions through these various pilgrimages. You never know why someone is here, why they have taken the time to come to Iga and put their lives at risk. So I don’t expect an answer. I never will from you, but I may remain curious.”

“That’s… that’s understandable.”

“Would you like to see how the One-Count Strike is really performed? I can’t bear the thought of you going around doing it in such a pathetic way. Switch weapons with me.”

The two exchanged weapons. Arik placed both hands on the staff and held it in the way that Akamatsu instructed, allowing him to block the older man’s attack.

“The School of Illusion used to teach a lesser version of the One-Count Strike,” Akamatsu explained. “It still has some effect, and against a weaker opponent it will still take them off their feet or kill them. Against a stronger opponent it may stun them, depending on their command over chi. But if you really want to accomplish this maneuver, you need to focus your chi not into the tip of your blade, but into its center. Act as if you are trying to break the blade in half. With a poorly crafted sword, this is something that could easily play out. In fact…” A smile formed on Akamatsu’s face.

“Yes?”

“I’ve seen it done once before, in a skirmish between Crimsonian blades and bandits between Mogra and Jur. A young warrior at the time used the skill to shatter his own blade in an attempt to take his opponent off guard. Imagine yourself fighting someone, their blade breaks in half, that change in confidence you would have. The bandit thought he had bested the man, and as he approached him, the man drove a dagger into the bandit’s leg and then used his broken sword to gut the vagrant. That man’s name? Nobunaga.”

Arik went pale. “You trained with Nobunaga?”

“No, he just happened to be there, a young Crimsonian buck trying to forgo the combat academies by joining a band of roving mercenaries. I wasn’t part of that band, mind you. But the governor of Mogra had ordered us to work with them because of the bandits that had been raiding settlements on the outer rim. Had I known that he would become the man he is now…” Akamatsu’s smile thinned. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. Prepare yourself. This is going to hurt.”

Arik neared the stance that Akamatsu had been in just moments ago when blocking his strikes.

“The staff will break, so be ready for that. And if you are blocking with a weapon like that, don’t just block with the weapon, block from the back of your heels. That’s where your power lies, the last line of defense. There is another aspect of this, but we can work on that later. Perhaps after tonight’s training?”

“Will we train tomorrow during the day as well?”

“That’s what you are paying me for, young man. You said you have a limited amount of time, and I intend to make good usage of that limited time.”

“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again,” Meosa told Arik, “this guy would make a much better guru than Hojo.”

Arik ignored Meosa as he prepared for Akamatsu’s One-Count Strike.

The old swordsman approached him calmly, as if he were taking an afternoon stroll through a garden. Akamatsu brought the wooden blade up. As he did, Arik noticed a crackle of energy in the air, a flash, and then the sound of the staff breaking as Arik was catapulted several feet backward.

The pain was instant.

It was as if someone had struck him in a way that had hit every bone in his body. He instinctively activated his healing power, only to silence it within seconds, knowing that someone like Akamatsu may be able to sense it, or even see it, especially with the sunlight illuminating the courtyard at the moment.

The older warrior walked over to Arik and offered him a hand. “Not bad, huh? I will teach you how to do that. I can’t guarantee yours will be as strong as mine but that is how it is done. Now, go grab another staff and let’s try again. Try to absorb it completely next time.”

****

Arik was beat by the time he got back to the hotel, and he only had five hours or so before he would meet Akamatsu yet again for more training, his night session with the Whispering Sword. This is what you wanted, he reminded himself, and with that he let his exhaustion fade away. The disciple cleaned up, had a small meal, and slept until Meosa woke him.

“Istvan is back.”

Arik rolled over and squinted at Meosa’s watery form. “What?”

“He is standing outside our door, as if he has something he wants to say. Just a warning that he may be knocking soon.”

Arik got up and made himself presentable, the disciple pulling his long hair behind his head and tying it off, fixing his robes. He sat on the edge of the bed staring at the door. “Is he still there?”

“He is. No, wait… he is going back to his own room now.”

What’s with this guy? Arik began preparing the straw dummies for the night’s lesson. He hadn’t had much time to stitch them up, but he did have extra tunics he had purchased the previous day, which would help to some degree. It was certainly starting to look a little worse for wear.

He met Akamatsu at the agreed-upon time, Arik completely ready to go by this point, focused.

“Tonight we will incorporate addressing multiple enemies and using your sword as it was intended. We’ll practice the One-Count Strike. Are there any other moves that you have been working on that you haven’t told me about?”

“The Autumn Leaves Strike,” Arik said.

He didn’t mention the attacking initiatives that he had obsessed over for so long, nor any of the lessons that Master Nankai had schooled him on back at the Academy of Healing Arts, but this did spark a memory of his old teacher.

Master Nankai is somewhere in the Jade Realm, Arik thought, which was something he had surmised several times now. While it would be just as easy for his old combat teacher to address Nobunaga in the South, he had this strange feeling that a better ambush would be in the Jade Realm, where he wasn’t expected. But he could be wrong. There was no telling what Master Nankai was thinking.

“Did you ever know a man named Nankai?” Arik asked Akamatsu as they reached the courtyard. “He taught at the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts.”

Akamatsu paused, the seasoned warrior slowly tilting his head up at the darkened sky. “I can’t say that I’ve heard that name before, sorry. Did you know him?”

“Just in passing.”

“Sometimes, that’s the only way we can know someone.” Akamatsu laughed. “Listen to me, trying to be philosophical. That was about the stupidest thing I’ve said in a fortnight, perhaps longer. Let’s place the dummies and begin.”

For the next several hours, Arik practiced using the Whispering Sword the way it was intended to be used. He could feel himself getting better and better, a confidence growing within as he slashed through the straw dummies. The two later transitioned to mixed combat styles, whip sword and regular swordplay, Akamatsu with an actual weapon made of steel this time to repel attacks.

For hours, Arik felt as if he were in the zone, no longer analyzing his play-by-play, obsessing over his footwork and the techniques he was attempting. He merely tried to strike his target, Arik’s attacks growing in both aggression and confidence.

Another thing became increasingly apparent as they trained—Akamatsu was too talented to be in a place like Iga collecting a pension. Arik felt sorry for him in that regard; someone like him should have been instructing others at one of the academies in the Crimson Realm. It was an insult that he was here fighting for money.

Everyone needs to survive in their own way, Arik thought, realizing that this also applied to him, and what he had been through since the night of the attack.

Arik’s robes were drenched in sweat by the time the sun came up that next morning, even if it was cool out. As he quickly caught his breath, he looked up at Akamatsu, who stood poised and ready to continue training.

“Remarkable,” Akamatsu told him, his chapped lips lifting into a grin. “I don’t recall a time I’ve seen someone improve as rapidly as you have. What are you doing this for? Why are you training in this way?”

Arik returned the Whispering Sword to its scabbard. “Because it is who I am now.”

Akamatsu slowly nodded, respect in his eyes. “That is good. Take the day off, and I’ll see you tonight. Before you leave, you may want to say something to your visitor.”

“Visitor?” Arik asked.

Akamatsu motioned up to the stands that surrounded the courtyard.

Arik’s eyes fell upon Istvan, who had his hammer sheathed across his back. The Onyxian man offered him a firm nod.

“Leave the test cutting dummies here. We won’t need them tonight. And if you are forced to challenge the man that has been watching you for the last several hours, try to keep the courtyard tidy. At the very least, leave no bodies behind.” Akamatsu turned away from him. “I’ll see you tonight, and as always, good luck.”

****

Once Akamatsu was gone, Istvan hopped to his feet and casually sent his arms over his head. After stretching, he slowly walked down to Arik until he was directly in front of him.

“If he tries anything, we will end it quickly,” Meosa told Arik. “I don’t know what his angle is, but there isn’t much he’s going to be able to do once I attack him.”

“Let’s see what he has to say first.”

“That is some sword you have.” Istvan paused across from Arik, the muscular man now within striking distance of the Whispering Sword. Arik kept his cool, doing his best to not look like he was preparing to go for the grip of his weapon.

“You… you followed me?”

“I did. And as I said, that’s some sword. I’ve never seen a weapon like that before. A whip sword. Huh. Who would have thought? Made of Yokaura, I assume.”

“What do you want?”

“I only want for you to be honest. Have I not been honest with you?” Istvan asked.

“I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“You are a disciple, are you not? Or you were. That is the only way that you were able to do what you did in our fight, through wound transfer. I recognize it.”

“Would it matter if I was?”

“Yes, it would. I don’t know how much you know about what the Crimson Realm has been doing, but I know for a fact that they are stockpiling weapons and gathering soldiers in the Valleys of the Unknowns, not far from here. Several of them have come through town, and I have forcefully gotten the information out of them. I also know what they did to the academies up north. The monsters. I appreciate what I learned, my understanding of Revivaura allowing me to use my weapon, and like you, or I think like you, I find what the Crimsonians have done inexcusable.”

Arik didn’t say anything.

“And judging by how much you have advanced your usage of Revivaura, and the fact that we’re around the same age, makes me think that it likely wasn’t very long ago that you were at one of the academies. Is this the case?”

“I think we can be honest with him,” Meosa told Arik. “Or you can. Don’t alert him to my presence, not yet.”

Arik relaxed his shoulders, and as he did, it felt like everything around him sank a foot into the ground. He only realized then how tense he had been, which wouldn’t have bode well had Istvan actually challenged him.

“Well?”

“You are… correct.” Arik gave him a brief overview of his story, from the attack to his journey down south, to his encounter with Nobunaga and the discovery that his sister, Mori Ehara, was still alive.

He mentioned Hojo, and went ahead and told Istvan that he was to meet the illusionist and his daughter in the coming days, that they were planning to disrupt Nobunaga’s operations. He didn’t tell Istvan about the Mask of the Fallen, nor of his journey to find the Whispering Sword. He also didn’t detail any of his understandings of Chimaura or his illusionist training.

“Then I was right. I knew to trust my instinct! We are more alike than not, brother.” Istvan threw his arms out and approached Arik. He clapped him on the shoulders and laughed. “Isn’t this amazing? How close we came to killing each other, and to find out now that our goals actually align. That is why I’ve been here training as well.”

“It is?” Arik asked, not able to hide the relief in his voice.

“I was in Austere when the first Crimsonian spies came through. I guess I should backtrack a little, to how I got this hammer. It belonged to my dad. He was a merchant. And he wanted me to be a fighter, to join the military up north. But then I got called away because of my capacity to use Revivaura. As you already know, I took care of my family after my father passed, which was why I was in town when these Crimsonians began passing through. I only wish I had done something then.”

A grimace formed on Istvan’s face as he cast his gaze to the ground.

“I’ve had those kinds of wishes before as well.”

“Maybe I could have changed something.”

“Maybe, but likely not.”

Istvan grunted. “Anyway, I’m not going to let that happen this time. I know they’ve been gathering and moving weapons through this region. But I learned of something yesterday that makes me think it is time to move now.”

“What’s that?”

“Nobunaga has arrived.”

The disciple tensed up. “Here?”

“At least that was the rumor, and there were enough guards to make me believe that this was actually the case. I think we should strike Nobunaga here.”

Arik slowly shook his head. “No, we should do it there in the Valleys of the Unknown. The people I’m working with are already there, planning to disrupt the entire supply chain. There are others that need to be dealt with as well,” he said, ominously referring to Kogu the businessman and Sengum Minamoto.

Arik didn’t know if they were at the military installations as well, but if they were…

“Then we should go to your people if that is the case. Nyoko will join us.”

“Nyoko?” Arik asked.

“She has a bone to pick as well, and the way I see it, we are going to need all the help we can get. When should we leave?”

“Maybe…” Arik thought back to the way that Akamatsu had reacted when there had been mention of Nobunaga. Perhaps he would want to join us. It would be incredibly useful to have someone like him on our side…

“Hojo isn’t going to like it if you just show up with a bunch of random fighters, disciple.”

Arik ignored Meosa as he responded to Istvan. “I need to train later tonight.” He blinked a few times, remembering again that it was morning. “Tonight. I promised Akamatsu that I would be here. He has already expressed his distaste for Nobunaga, so maybe he will join us.”

Istvan shrugged. “The more the merrier, if you ask me.”

“Agreed.”

“Aside from the illustrious kami that has joined you, how are you going to explain Basha to the fire hammer boy? Hmmm?” Meosa asked, Arik continuing to ignore him.

Istvan punched his fist into his open palm. “Then we can leave in the morning, in front of the hotel. That will give me time to wrap up a few things and meet with Nyoko. Exciting, isn’t it? Nobunaga won’t know what hit him.”

.Chapter Four.

“Fare thee well to the man whom the fates doom at dawn.”

–A quote often attributed to Combat Master Baldree Yamanouchi, Year 1086.

Arik Dacre had a hard time resting on the day that followed, the disciple feeling now as if he had said too much to Istvan, wishing that he had kept to himself in the first place. He imagined Hojo wouldn’t be happy to see him show up with a handful of companions, not to mention Tayaura, who didn’t seem all that trusting to begin with.

There was also the potential complication that Akamatsu wouldn’t want to join them, that he would be against any action taken against Nobunaga. In this case, maybe it would be best for Arik not to say anything, and leave Iga unannounced, cutting his lessons short.

He could offer Akamatsu more money for wasting the older man’s time, yet Arik couldn’t shake this feeling that the retired Crimsonian blade deserved an explanation, that he deserved to know who Arik was. He also recognized that this was a fatal flaw in his own character, this desire to do right by others, to be as clear as possible.

It was a core part of his personality.

No matter how much he trained, no matter how much he learned about Chimaura, Yokaura, or Thunderaura, he would still be a disciple, born and raised, someone who would come up through the Academy of Healing Arts, a person who often confused empathy with situational awareness.

There really was no other way around it, and he respected and appreciated Akamatsu enough to at least give him some version of the truth. But he couldn’t tell him everything. Arik decided to leave out his past as a disciple for now, as well as knowledge of the people he was teaming up with to address Nobunaga head-on.

Arik would merely mention what he needed to do next, and let Akamatsu take it from there.

Later that night, he joined the older man at the foot of the stairs. All of Arik’s things were packed in the room above and ready to go once the disciple returned in the morning.

Akamatsu looked perfectly refreshed, the top of his head shiny, his trademark beard stubble gone. Even his robes seemed pressed. “We will continue to work on the One-Count Strike tonight, followed by the same practices we were doing last night, alternating between using your weapon in a more traditional way and as a whip sword. I’m sure that another swordsman would say differently, but the strength of that weapon lies as much in its range and rapid slicing ability as it does sheer surprise. There are some times that you should use it as it is intended to be used, and other times you should summon its alternate power as if it were a secret weapon. I tell you, young man, it’s going to turn some heads once you pull it out on the battlefield, heads that will subsequently wish they hadn’t turned in your direction. Heh.”

As they had before, the hours that followed passed by rapidly, Akamatsu always giving pointers or making suggestions where Arik could improve. They used wooden weapons to practice the One-Count Strike, the disciple heeding what the older warrior had told him by focusing the chi he could conjure into the center mass of his weapon, rather than its tip.

And Arik was getting the hang of it.

He recognized this at one point when Akamatsu shot backward, forced to take a knee, surprise tracing across his face. The grizzled veteran looked up at him with a cracked grin. “You continue to impress.”

They came to the portion of their training in which they used real weapons, Akamatsu always seeming to be two steps ahead of Arik, similar to Hojo. He brought the disciple down several times, and even encouraged Arik to try to attack him with the Whispering Sword, which Arik did, Akamatsu miraculously able to block all the incoming strikes.

Thunderaura… Arik thought as he noticed the crackle of energy in the air around him, the hairs on the back of his arm standing up. As he had before with Chimaura, Arik wished that he had a lifetime to study these various aspects of chi, to truly master them, less for the strength it would give him and more for his sheer interest in understanding the powers.

Yet again, this made him feel for the plight of humankind and how they always found a way to be at each other’s throats. If the three realms of Taomoni could only cooperate, if only they could come up with a symposium, some way to share such a unique knowledge of the various aspects of chi cultivation.

But he knew this would never be the case.

With those thoughts now clear from his mind, Arik continued his training into the morning, only breaking once when Akamatsu decided to take a pause for a quick meal of bread and water.

They ended their practice with Arik doing the same test he had done when they first started it, the disciple and the combat veteran setting up the four straw targets, Arik slicing them to shreds with the Whispering Sword, his strikes all connecting.

“Yet again, your trajectory surprises me. Tomorrow night…” Akamatsu paused, interpreting something from Arik. “Yes? Is something the matter?”

Arik slowly returned his sword to his scabbard. “Sadly, I won’t be able to join you tomorrow night or going forward, not for now.”

“Is that so? In that case…” Akamatsu bowed to Arik. “It has been a pleasure, young man. Training with you has brought me joy.”

“I didn’t mean that…” Arik disregarded Meosa as the kami chided him for making this awkward. “I didn’t mean I wouldn’t see you again. It’s just that something has come up. You asked about me, why I am doing this, and I’m prepared to tell you.”

Akamatsu gestured toward him. “Oh? Are you sure?”

Arik decided to go with a shortened version of what he was planning and why: “My family and my peers were slaughtered by false shinobi, who were operating under Nobunaga’s orders. There are rumors going around that he is coming to Iga, and from there to the Valleys of the Unknown, where they are preparing weapons to invade the Onyx Realm. I am from the Onyx Realm. And I intend to stop him.”

Akamatsu grimaced, and yet again, Arik felt a tinge of something electric to the air.

He couldn’t tell if these were his nerves, or something that Akamatsu was doing. Arik continued, trying not to feel like the oxygen around him was slowly depleting: “I wanted to ask you if you would be interested in joining me and others in stopping Nobunaga. I don’t know if…”

“You have said enough.” Akamatsu placed his hand on the grip of his weapon. “I am far from a fan of Nobunaga, but you must understand, young man, I will always put my country before another realm, before money, and even before the respect that I may have for another person. It is unfortunate that I’m going to have to do this. Draw your weapon. Face me.”

“No, that’s not…”

An intensity traced across Akamatsu’s eyes. “I will only tell you one more time. As a Crimsonian blade, I cannot allow you to kill Nobunaga.”

****

Arik knew better than to hesitate.

He had been training with Akamatsu for several days now, and he had experienced the older man’s strength and his powerful command over Thunderaura. If Akamatsu struck first, Arik was as good as dead. He had to act fast, and what he did next was something Arik would never quite forgive himself for.

He drew the Whispering Sword, activating it immediately, the blades twisting forward, faster than ever as they cut Akamatsu down.

They drew multiple lacerations, even as the older warrior tried to go for his weapon. Arik’s sword was just too quick, and his instinct, one that he had developed since the incident at the Academy, matched the speed of his enchanted weapon.

In the end, Akamatsu was left a bloodied mess, the older man gasping, his hand on the front of his chest as blood spread across the front of his robes.

To go from fatally injuring an opponent to wanting to heal them was also an instinctual thing for the disciple, Arik at Akamatsu’s side in a matter of seconds, prepared to right his wrongs.

He kicked the man’s sword away, not that he needed to. “Hold still, I can…”

Akamatsu was now missing fingers. Multiple wounds climbed his arms, his face a mask of blood, his pupils twitching as he looked up at Arik and offered him a crimson grin. “That… that is how… how you use that weapon…”

“I… I can heal you,” Arik said, coming right out with it. “I told you I am from the north, but what I didn’t tell you is that I’m a disciple. I can fix this. I will fix this.”

He dropped in front of the older man and prepared to absorb his wounds. Arik was surprised when Akamatsu lunged forward with his good hand and grabbed him by the throat, his grip tightening even if there wasn’t much fight left in the retired blade.

“No…” Akamatsu said, blood dripping down his chin as spoke: “Don’t you… don’t you dare try.”

He let go of his throat and pressed away from Arik, Akamatsu now on his elbows, the disciple seeing more of the damage that his sword caused. The viscera was thick and black, the white glint of bone visible as Akamatsu sucked in faint breaths.

Arik was glad to hear Meosa’s voice. “Bring him his weapon, disciple. Crimsonians believe that if they die with the weapon they will have a better chance in the afterlife. Honor him.”

“Please, let me…”

Akamatsu spoke through clenched teeth. “You have done well, disciple. It all… it all makes sense now. What a pleasure to… to train you. What a pleasure to… spend the last moments of my life in combat. It all makes sense to me now.”

Arik dropped the Whispering Sword and went for Akamatsu’s weapon. He brought it to the dying man, who now lay completely on his back, staring up at the morning twilight. “You don’t deserve…”

“No, I do. Believe me, I do…” Akamatsu said as he placed his hand over his blade, which Arik had set on his chest. “Thank you for… thank you for bringing me my weapon. The demons won’t be able to stop… me.”

“Please, let me heal you! I can leave, you can continue on here as if nothing happened. I’m sorry, I…” Arik didn’t know what else to say, a matter made only worse knowing that he could actually do something, that he could actually heal Akamatsu if the man would just let him.

“No… no. You must learn to recognize things as they are, disciple. You’ve done enough. That money you… that money you gave me, that sen, allowed me to buy a plot in the Warrior’s Cemetery. You made my last days in this world comfortable, and fulfilling.” A single tear cut through the blood on Akamatsu’s face as it rolled down his chin. “It is all someone like me could ask for.”

“What do I do with…?” Arik sent his emotions away with a deep breath in. It was hard to ask a question like this, hard to watch life leave someone’s body. Had there been a better way? Could he have talked Akamatsu out of challenging him? There was no way to know.

“Leave my body here,” Akamatsu said as his eyes began to slowly twitch. “The administrators… that run these courtyards… they will know what to do. I would like my blood to stain this place… eternally. They have my information. They… they will know where to place my body.”

“What about your family? What can I do?”

“No family… you have done exactly what you had to do. Do not… do not worry.” Akamatsu slowly focused on Arik. He placed his bloodied hand on the disciple’s arm. “Just know when it’s time to let go. May your sword never fail, may your heart grow stronger still. That is the way… of a blade, disciple. May you never fail to… to cut through the madness.”

Akamatsu’s shoulders lifted and lowered as his last breath exited his body. He died with his right hand gripping Arik’s arm, his mutilated left hand still holding his sword close to his chest, his face a mask of twisted pride even after he was gone.

It was a heavy moment.

.Chapter Five.

“The word ‘shinobi’ has never been used in a positive connotation, no matter what we have done for the Jade Realm. Accept the fact that you will be underappreciated.”

–A quote attributed to Hidden Warrior Hirata Masuhiro de Iga of the School of Illusion, and later published in a collection of his carvings, Hirata in Stone, First Edition, Yoshimura Books,

Year 1019.

Arik Dacre reached the hotel to find the Jadean axe-wielder named Nyoko seated in the lobby. She looked incredibly out of place in her thick animal hides, her cap featuring the head of a mountain lion, a streak of red painted across her face in a band.

“Where’s Istvan?”

Nyoko nodded her chin toward the top of the stairs, her eyes then focusing on a bit of blood that was on Arik’s hands and throat.

He ignored her gaze. “Tell him I’ll be right down.”

Arik reached his room and shut the door behind him, not bothering to say anything to Istvan, whose door was open as he finished packing up. The disciple approached the wash bin and began cleaning his face, his shoulders sinking as he relived what had happened between Akamatsu and him. It was a tragic death, a senseless one that made him hate the rules and beliefs of his world, of loyalty to country, the sort of pride that fueled Crimsonians and other sworn warriors.

“It wasn’t your fault, disciple. He asked for it, you answered. And you answered rather well,” Meosa said as gently as possible, the kami now floating next to Arik. “I know that what happened doesn’t seem like the kind of death anyone would want, but a Crimsonian blade like Akamatsu has lived to die in this way. It’s an odd thing to say, but a warrior’s death is something that is cherished in the South, and that was certainly a warrior’s death. Plus, he has a gravestone here already set up. I would go as far as to say he knew it was coming. Did you notice how cleaned up he was when we met him? He knew.”

“You think?” Arik looked over to Meosa, the water in the bin now a light red from the blood he’d washed away.

“I believe so, disciple. And by doing what he asked, not falling back onto your instinct, in a way, you honored him. I certainly thought so. It was brave.”

Arik bit his lip. “How could what I did be considered brave?”

“Akamatsu should have been able to take you down. If you had hesitated for even a few seconds longer, he may have done so. Naturally, I would have tried to stop him, but he was fast, disciple. You did the right thing, and you were brave for doing so, even if you could have simply healed him, you did not. I may have my doubts about Hojo, but I believe he would say the same thing. Our dignity is all we truly have in the end. You honored Akamatsu’s dignity through your actions.”

“You think?” Arik asked softly.

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it, disciple.”

****

Focusing on the task at hand—reaching the Valleys of the Unknown—was something Arik welcomed, the disciple able to brush past what had happened with Akamatsu and the exhaustion he was feeling after another incredibly long day.

Neither Nyoko or Istvan spoke until they passed the outskirts of Iga, where they would transition to the rockier surroundings as the group pushed north. It would be a relatively easy journey compared to some of the ones that he had taken over the last few weeks, their travel to take place on a clear enough day, even with the mists of the valleys starting to make their presence known.

“Arik Dacre, this is Nyoko.”

Arik couldn’t tell if the grin on Istvan’s face was meant to be playful or not.

“We’ve met.”

Istvan continued to grin at the two of them. “Did you now?”

“I told you we did.”

“We fought,” Nyoko told him, her voice soft and feminine, at odds with her rugged features. Arik recalled hearing her voice before, just a simple greeting before their sparring match.

“You never told me that.”

Nyoko huffed. “You never told me who we were joining. Only that he was a man from the North.”

“He is indeed that. Also, Arik, what’s with the blood from earlier? Find some Crimsonians in the streets?” Istvan rubbed his hands together.

Arik grimaced.

“On your throat and hands,” Nyoko said. “I saw the blood when you came into the hotel.”

“I tried to recruit the old blade who was training me. It didn’t… it didn’t go as well as I would have liked.”

The smile on Istvan’s face faded. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m guessing he wouldn’t let you heal him.”

“No, he would not.”

The muscled northern man slowly shook his head. “Typical Crimsonian nonsense. There is nothing wrong with wanting to stay alive and preserve one’s self. They act like it is a crime against humanity to want to breathe another few years.”

“It’s their tradition,” Nyoko reminded Istvan, her tone telling Arik that she’d told him something like this before.

Istvan grunted a response as he procured a hand-drawn map from his bag. “Moving on. I’ve taken the liberty of simplifying a map that I bought from a merchant who has been dealing with the incoming Crimsonians.” He glanced up at Arik. “As you know, there are three main installations for Nobunaga’s supply chain, which they call ‘camps.’ They are all near each other, separated by about a quarter of a mile, but there is clear delineation between the three. We’re here.” He tapped on the map. “We’ll need to start being careful in about ten miles once we reach here. There could be guards, there could be yokai.”

“And once we get there? You weren’t clear on that part.”

Istvan nodded to Arik. “That’s their call.”

“Their call?”

“Your friends, the two illusionists.”

“Right,” Arik said with a gulp. “Just in case I wasn’t clear, these are actual illusionists, not false shinobi. They are a father and daughter duo,” he told Nyoko. “You would recognize the father; he was at our pilgrimages.”

“The man with the hat that covered his face?” Nyoko asked.

“Yes, and that’s not the only person—er, let’s call it person— that we are going to meet. You know what?” Arik looked up, as if the sky had the answer. “I think it’s time you know a little more about who I’m traveling with. It will make who we need to meet up with later a bit clearer. Meosa, please join us.”

“It’s about bloody time,” Meosa said as he took shape next to Arik, his water form bulging with muscles. “Respect me, humans, and I’ll be friendly enough.”

Istvan’s immediate response was to jump back and draw his flaming hammer; Nyoko didn’t go for her axe, the Jadean fighter clearly more comfortable around yokai and kami.

Meosa started to laugh. “Some show of respect. You really think you’ll be able to hit me with that, hammer boy? I’ll have you talking with a mouthful of water before you can take a step closer. But we’re not here to fight one another. The disciple here just wanted you to see who he has been traveling with so you don’t do anything stupid once we join forces with a giant skeleton.”

“Giant skeleton?” Istvan still was confused and gripping his hammer so tightly that his knuckles were white.

“There is a yokai we plan to meet, one that is waiting for us somewhere in the valleys,” Arik explained. “The two illusionists might have already met with Basha.”

“And Basha is the giant skeleton?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s known as a gashadokuro,” Nyoko told Istvan, “if that helps.”

“It doesn’t. And the water kami is named Meosa?”

“You’re catching on, and you’d be good to show me some respect considering I’ve been alive since Coro Pache slayed his way across all of Taomoni, back when your realm was the aggressor.”

Istvan lowered his weapon. “We are being joined by two illusionists, a kami, and a giant skeleton yokai?” He exchanged glances with Nyoko, a smirk appearing on his completely hairless face. “That’s… that’s wonderful! This is exactly why I left home—well, not exactly, I told you about Austere already—but I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t looking for adventure. Heh. Amazing! And so you’re just completely made of water?”

“I am made of much more than water, including a mean streak and enough mettle to bend the will of anyone who dares stand in my way!” Meosa twisted into a spiral, the air misting with water. Istvan poked his finger at the kami, which went straight through his form.

He’s being comical, Arik thought once Meosa tipped his head back and spit out a stream of water, as if he were a fountain.

Nyoko raised an eyebrow at Meosa. “I understand now. You’re like the kami that owns the Crystal Castle. I’ve been there before.”

“Like him? Sukitoma is my dear friend! We just visited him, actually. That’s how we met Basha.”

Nyoko glanced at Arik, who confirmed what Meosa said with a nod. “We actually stayed in the Crystal Castle. It was very strange.”

“Very strange? All of this is very strange! Anything else you’d like to tell us, disciple, before we put ourselves in a situation that could lead to our deaths? Do you have some hidden something or other that we need to know about? Any more kami hitching a ride on your shoulders? Unfortunately, we don’t have any big secrets,” Istvan said, gesturing to Nyoko, “but I suppose you haven’t heard much of her backstory. Still, nothing like what you’ve told me already and revealed just now.”

“Anything else?” Arik knew that Hojo would have told him to keep his mask and his weapon to himself, but Hojo wasn’t with him at the moment, and Arik was of the mindset that he should make his companions aware of what he was able to do.

He took the Mask of the Fallen out of the inner pocket of his robes.

“An old Hidden Warrior mask?” asked Nyoko. “I’ve seen something like this before in a monastery.”

“It is the Mask of the Fallen; it belonged to Coro Pache.”

“The actual War Priest?” Istvan asked.

Arik nodded.

“And what does it do?”

This was the point in which Arik decided to hold back just a little. “It aids me in combat. There’s another thing I have that belonged to Coro Pache. You’ve already seen it.”

“Your whip sword.”

“That’s right,” Arik told Istvan. “It’s known as the Whispering Sword.” He turned to Nyoko. “I’ll show you what it does so you are aware.”

After he placed his mask back in his pocket, Arik drew the Whispering Sword and activated it. The blade split in two as it melted toward the ground, Nyoko wide-eyed by the time Arik sent the two whip-like portions forward and cut through a mangled shrub that had grown out of the side of a rock.

Throughout his entire action, something akin to the sound of people whispering filled the air.

“These are legendary items,” Nyoko said once Arik returned his sword to its scabbard. “Some would say they never existed in the first place.”

Meosa scoffed at the statement. “They certainly existed. Remember, I was there when the War Priest was making a name for himself. It is best if people don’t think weapons like this exist, or for that matter, a weapon like the flaming hammer, which is clearly made of Yokaura. Same with the Whispering Sword.”

“Yes, same,” said Istvan.

“Good, now that we have all of this out of the way, I’ll be heading off to find Basha, because it is easy for me to get around. This may take me a little time, but if we’re able to find the giant bag of bones before we figure out what to do with the supply chain, and before we figure out what the supposed illusionists have discovered, the better it will be for all of us. How about this? Let me see that map again.”

Meosa floated over to Istvan and examined the map. A curled, watery finger appeared but it never touched the parchment.

“I will meet you in around the same place you were planning to camp for the night. Here, right?”

“Right.”

“That makes it easy.”

“And how will you travel?” Istvan asked.

“I can travel on my own, but I do better with a host. I’m not a parasite, mind you, and don’t you go thinking I am! I’m sure I’ll find some little rodent or yokai in these parts that will make my journey easier. Once I’m closer to the action, I’ll use the mist to find Basha. He’s a giant skeleton. That part can’t be very hard.”

“What about the three military installations? Will you check those?”

“That depends, disciple. Remember, Nobunaga has Enenra with him.”

“Enenra?” asked Nyoko.

“An evil witch of a wind kami. Let’s just say we have a past. I think, until we find Basha, that I’ll leave the infiltration part up to our illusionists and later, the disciple.”

“You’re trained in shinobi infiltration?” Nyoko asked Arik, a hint of skepticism in her voice. “You didn’t mention anything about that.”

Arik bit his lip. “The man you saw me with. He is, or was, a Hidden Warrior. He’s been training me. Not just on sword usage but… other things as well.”

Istvan started to shake his head. “Another secret, huh? Any more that we need to know about?”

“Not… not that I can think of at the moment.”

Meosa rubbed his watery hands together. “Then that settles it. You three try not to get eaten by a hangry hainu on your way to the meeting place. Don’t worry about me. It’s much easier for me to find you than it is to find me. And don’t be startled when I show up with an enormous skeleton.” The kami separated from Arik fully. “Goodbye for now, kiddos!”

****

Arik, Istvan, and Nyoko came to a rather unique location, one that would have given them a clear view of two of the three installations had it not been for the mist. Regardless, it was the perfect lookout spot, the trio situated on a bluff covered in old-growth trees, twisted roots cascading over the edge adding a mangled texture to their surroundings.

It was overcast now, the day slowly slipping into night.

“If it clears up,” Istvan said as he swept his hand out toward the mist, “we’ll be able to see everything fully.”

“I can tell.”

Arik noticed that the faint outline of the installations was visible and it was clear there was human activity nearby, yet he felt completely secluded in their current location, the disciple recognizing a good hiding spot when he saw it.

It would do until they could get in touch with Hojo and Tayaura, both of whom he imagined were somewhere down there doing what illusionists did best. Arik was certain they were alive, even if he had no way of knowing if this were the case or not.

“In that case, I’ll gather something to eat.” The Jadean mountain woman set her bag down and stepped away, leaving Arik with Istvan.

“She’s like that, you know. Raised by wolves is what I like to say. A hunter type. Her whole village is.”

“Where’s she from again?”

“Somewhere around Moonagwa,” Istvan said as he sat with his back against a tree and stretched his legs out.

“And you two have sparred?”

“Too many times to count. She’s never beaten me, but she’s come close. She doesn’t give up, you know.”

“And how did you get her to come with us?”

“She isn’t a fan of the Crimsonian movements in the Jade Realm either. Anyone in their right mind would know it is a bad thing. It would be extremely short-sighted to think the Crimsonians would just skip over the Jade Realm, conquer the Onyx, and not turn back to the Jade once they have it locked in. Plus, she’s always looking for a challenge.”

Arik shrugged. “Kogu doesn’t seem to care what the Crimsonians do. Whoever he’s paying off in the government doesn’t seem to mind either.”

“Who?”

Arik explained who Kogu was, the businessman facilitating Nobunaga’s push behind the scenes, and some of the things they had done to get the information about the supply chain.

“I was unaware of this man,” Istvan said. “But he sounds like a true coward. Anyone that would sell their country out like that…”

Arik sat as well, glad to be able to take the load off for a moment. “Maybe he has some sort of agreement with Nobunaga about what happens after he’s taken our home.”

The northern man’s disposition soured. “Nobunaga won’t reach the border. I won’t allow it.”

There were numerous ways to react to a statement like this. One would be to offer Istvan a sad laugh for thinking that one man was going to be able to stop the swell of a Crimsonian army, but that was exactly what Arik was trying to do, and he found Istvan’s willingness to be open about what he planned to do inspiring.

So Arik merely nodded.

“Well?” Istvan asked.

“Yes?”

“Are you with me?” Istvan grew serious, a fire burning behind his eyes. “Are you willing to risk it all?”

The attack at his academy, his family, everything that had happened since came at him in a flash, a cluster of broken images. “I am.”

“Good, because once I start, I won’t stop.”

“I…” Arik bit his lip. “I can’t guarantee something like that, but it has been my goal since the start of this to stop Nobunaga. We may not completely stop their advance, but we will severely wound it.”

Istvan looked down at his fists, which were now clenched tight. “Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“No, it’s good. It’s good to be as willing as you are to do what needs to be done.”

“I’ve always felt shame, you know.”

“For what?” Arik asked, assuming that Istvan was referring to not taking action against the spies that came through Austere.

“For not following through with my disciple training. It has come in handy, you know, being able to heal. I wouldn’t be able to use my weapon without it.”

“You did what you had to do. Your family needed you.”

Istvan shook his head. “I just wish I had been there when they came to the academy.”

“It was chaos. No one was prepared for a slaughter like that,” Arik said, growing dark as he remembered how cruel the ambush had been.

“I can only imagine. I still wish I had been there, though. I know that sounds stupid; I know that there was probably nothing I could have done, nothing anyone could have done.”

Arik had found himself in the same mindset. Rather than reply, he listened to Istvan tell him how he felt until the northern man suddenly stopped, as if he were feeling shy. Istvan stood and walked to the edge of the bluff. He placed his big boot on one of the roots and looked out at the outline of the supply chain.

“We’re going to do this,” he said with certainty. “It doesn’t matter to me what happens next.”

It did matter to Arik. He had to rescue his sister and get to the bottom of why his teacher Master Guri Yarna had betrayed him. But he could appreciate the sentiment.

Istvan was right in many ways.

****

Nyoko and Istvan made a good team. After the Jadean mountain woman returned with a collection of roots, three plump squirrels, and a type of grass Arik hadn’t seen before, the two set about making a small fire while it was still light, one concealed by the trees.

“We’ll have to cook quickly,” Istvan said, “but we still have several hours before sunset.”

They did just that, Nyoko preparing the meat and telling Istvan what she needed, the northern man obediently following her orders. Soon, Arik had roasted squirrel on a stick—something he could have never fathomed eating before—flavored by the bark and wrapped in the grass that Nyoko had found.

It was a good meal, and they were just hiding the fire when Arik sensed a presence.

“That’s right,” Meosa said, swirling into existence near the disciple, “I’m back!”

Nyoko smiled at the water spirit; Istvan still seemed reluctant regarding Meosa’s presence.

“Where’s Basha?” asked Arik.

“Laying low at the moment, my boy. He’ll come this way once it is dark. Don’t be surprised to wake up in the morning and see an enormous skeleton looking down at you. This is quite the spot you have here.” Meosa took a quick look around. “Perfect view too, if it wasn’t for the mist.”

“It’ll work,” Arik told him. “Has Basha had any contact with Hojo or Tayaura?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What… what do you think they’re doing down there?”

Meosa snickered at Arik’s question. “The shinobi daughter and father? How would I bloody know? They are both trained illusionists. For all I know, they’ve conned their way into the upper echelon running the three camps by now and have begun slowly poisoning the soldiers. I have no way of knowing unless I go down there and try to find them.”

“That could work.”

“It would work.”

“We don’t want to just stay here,” Istvan said. “If you go, we go.”

Meosa laughed bitterly at the statement. “Oh? So everyone is a trained shinobi now? Everyone knows how to disguise themselves to the point that you can infiltrate a camp filled with mercenaries and elite blades from the Crimson Realm? What about the wolf woman? Does she know how?”

“It’s a mountain lion,” Nyoko said, referring to her cap.

“Relax,” Arik said, mostly for Meosa, but also for the other two. The kami took some time to get used to, something that was clear in how the others reacted to him. “You and I will go.”

“Yes,” Meosa said, “that would certainly work. Just get me close and I’ll do the rest. There are likely traders and other services, like pillowers, outside the walls they’ve erected.  Even if this is supposed to be a secret build-up, soldiers are going to want to buy things, and they’re going to want other services to release their various human tensions.”

“And we’ll just stay here?” asked Istvan.

“Yes, you’ll stay here keeping Basha, our giant skeleton friend, entertained. We’ll go, return with news of what we should do next, then we’ll do it. The disciple and I have trained extensively for this, even if he doesn’t look the part.”

“You’ve trained as an illusionist?” Nyoko asked. “I thought that man with you was just teaching you combat.”

“Among other things, yes,” was all Arik said.

“So you can use Chimaura?”

Arik was firm in his answer to Istvan. “No, and Chimaura isn’t what you think. It isn’t what anyone thinks. It isn’t like Revivaura or Thunderaura, or even like your weapon, Yokaura.”

Istvan crossed his arms over his chest. “I hate that explanation. It’s the one they always give when you ask someone from the realm about it. ‘It’s not what you think’ or ‘it’s happening everywhere all the time and it can’t be explained.’ How hard can it be to understand? Revivaura is for healing, Thunderaura for combat, Yokaura for crafting, Chimaura for—”

“Crafting? Yokaura isn’t merely for crafting,” Meosa told him. “But sure, believe the simple version. As for Chimaura, you’re asking the wrong person. If you want to know more about it, ask the illusionist or his despotic daughter when we return with them sometime tomorrow. I’m done arguing. It’s been a long day and even though I don’t need sleep, I’d like to see the three of you get some rest. Remember what I said: don’t be surprised to find a giant skeleton lurking around here in the morning.”

.Chapter Six.

“If you plan to carry out treachery, send salted fish. If you plan to commit arson, send dried fish. A request for provisions should come with rice cakes. Send sweet cakes when asking for forces to attack the enemy. When sending these things you should attach a normal letter. The receiver will understand the message and act accordingly.”

–Madame Noll Arimask in her Scroll on Better Order, later published in the Jadean Book of Proverbs, Year 1475.

Meosa wasn’t wrong in his warning about Basha. The next morning, Arik blinked his eyes open to see the large skeletal yokai sitting on the ground, similar to the way he’d sat when they first approached him at the lake, Basha’s femur club at his side.

“Good morning, disciple,” Basha said, his booming voice startling Istvan and Nyoko, who instinctively grabbed her axe, her breaths short and staccato. As he had been wearing before, Basha was in a pair of epaulets connected by a thick leather strap that dangled over his rib cage.

“I told you two not to be alarmed,” said Meosa, who now floated next to Arik, his translucent form rimmed in the pale morning light.

“Yeah.” Istvan swallowed. “You did. But…”

“But what? I said he’d be a giant skeleton.” Meosa tilted what could be construed as his head up to Basha.

“Hi, everyone. Don’t be scared. I’m here because of a blood-debt.”

Meosa snorted, water misting the air. “And this one doesn’t even have any blood!”

“Blood debt?” Istvan asked Arik.

“We beat him in a challenge, and he agreed to help us.”

“I also don’t want war in the Jade Realm,” said Basha. “I’ve seen too much of it in my time.”

“Humans and their wars.” Meosa deflated to some degree. “Well, disciple? Are you going to get dressed up or what? I’m sick of watching the three of you sleep. We need to get down there and find the illusionists.”

Arik turned away from the others and took a few steps past Basha.

“Yes?” Meosa asked as he appeared at the disciple’s side, noticing his apprehension.

“What should I go as?”

“You have three basic options, my boy: beggar, nobleman, or entertainer. Which would make more sense out here? Why would a beggar be in the Valleys of the Unknown? And for that matter, why would a nobleman show up unannounced? Need I say any more?”

“I…” Arik looked back to the others. “I don’t want to do this around them.”

“Fair enough.” Meosa turned back to Istvan and Nyoko. “We’re leaving to gather intel. Don’t do anything stupid like follow us. We’ll be back before nightfall with either information or illusionists. Both, if we’re lucky.”

“And if you don’t return?” Istvan asked.

“If we don’t return? If we don’t return, I’d say head back to Iga because it means we have died or are currently being tortured. If we’re dead, the two of you will most certainly get yourself killed as well. Sorry to say, hammer boy and mountain lion. In that case, if you value your lives, and I hope you do, you’ll go back to beating each others’ brains in through warrior pilgrimages. Basha, I have no idea how your death would work, so I can’t comment there. Just go back to doing what you were doing and consider your ‘blood debt,’ as you put it, paid in full.”  Meosa gave the group a pair of watery thumbs up. “I believe that settles it. Onward, disciple!”

****

“You didn’t have to do it like that,” Arik told Meosa once they were a few minutes away from the group.

“Ha! Back there? It’s always best to be honest, my boy, and if you can be blunt as well, do that too. No one likes a person who dances around the tails of the kitsune.”

They continued on, and eventually reached the point that Arik needed to apply his makeup. Crouching behind a pair of trees shrouded by thick vines, the disciple went with the same scheme as he had in Moonagwa—white across his entire face, a red circle in the center of his forehead, elaborate eye make-up, his hair in three ponytails.

Meosa laughed at him once he’d finished. “I can see why you didn’t want to do this in front of the others.”

“Just playing the part.”

“And I’m assuming I’ll be the one doing the talking?”

“No, I will. You’ll be the one doing the magic.”

“Fine.”

Arik’s next step was hiding his sword in his pant legs and using his haori cape to change the way he looked, the disciple rolling up the sleeves of his robes as well.

Once he was ready, Arik walked in a way that would let him drag his foot a little, a change to his gait. He hunched one shoulder forward too, meandering along and starting to feel like he was in someone else’s body.

The mist grew thicker as he neared the first military camp. Even if it was still obscured by fog, the telltale signs of humanity were already present. Arik noticed everything from discarded wooden wheels to horse droppings, clothing, and a sandal or two that had been lost.

“Your kind really is a mess,” Meosa told him. “Filthy, really.”

Arik entered what resembled a bustling outdoor market, albeit one with square-hatted Crimsonian guards standing at the entrance. There were other types of guards as well. Arik recognized that some of them wore hats similar to Tatum, the man he had once challenged and who had later won the Mogra tournament, but these hats had vertical markings weaved into them. Others had smaller, square hats that sat on the tip of their crowns. The strangest ones wore wooden bird masks instead of hats and carried cages, the disciple not certain what their role was.

This area was cordoned off from the front of the installation, which was heavily guarded, a distance of about twenty feet between the start of the first camp and the outdoor market. It seemed like the only thing being let in were tiny sparrows, which filled the air with the sound of their chirps as they passed overhead, some with golden tail feathers.

Arik caught sight of more Crimson flags, their maroon hues cutting through the gray mist in a way that reminded Arik of the bloodlust he experienced when wearing the Mask of the Fallen. It was a lot to take in.

“Keep moving, disciple,” Meosa told Arik after he’d come to a full stop.

He swallowed and pressed on, Arik searching for any signs of Tayaura or Hojo.

Now that he was here, he had no idea where to begin when it came to finding the three, Arik wishing there was another way for him to easily locate them. I could always send Meosa out, he thought, but if he did this, Arik would be all alone, something that didn’t bode well for the disciple considering the proximity of Crimsonian soldiers, both on and off duty.

Arik came to a series of tents that had been erected, strips of fringed red fabric hanging over their doors.

A woman spilled out of one of the tents, clutching her blanket to her chest, laughing as she was pursued by a muscled Crimsonian man. He lifted her over his shoulder and carried her back in, revealing a sliver of flesh on her flank as he did so.

“You don’t think Tayaura has become a pillower, do you?” Meosa asked.

Arik shook his head. “There has to be hundreds of people out here.”

“If there are that many here, imagine how many are actually inside. I’d put good sen on the fact that the Jadean Government is in on this in some way, at least the provincial government. There’s no way Igan officials wouldn’t know this is happening. The supplies it would take to run the place alone. It is too early to truly tell, disciple—remember in this world and any other, iniquity and politics go hand in hand—but the Jade Realm may be making their play here alongside the Crimson Realm to take the north. Where this leaves their relations if they succeed in conquering the Onyx Realm is anyone’s guess. But they have chosen a side.”

“You think?” Arik came to a hastily erected structure with a large cloth awning over it, one serving bowls of soup and racks of meat.

“That is clearly the case, disciple.”

A hand grabbed Arik’s arm from behind, startling him. He turned to find a familiar face, his shoulders relaxing to some degree.

“What are you doing here?” Tayaura hissed, the illusionist wearing an apron stained with food, a ladle in her other hand. She’d pulled her short hair into a side ponytail and had used brown shading to make her face look gaunter than it normally was.

“Looking for you,” Arik said as she pulled him to the side. “Where’s Hojo?”

Tayaura narrowed her eyes on Arik as she blew a single strand of hair out of her face as she tilted her chin to the north. “He’s inside the walls.”

Arik looked toward the installation, the mist cleared up enough now that he could see some thatched roofs beyond. “Really?”

“He is supposed to be out by now. Now, tell me why you are here. Explain why you haven’t waited for us to come for you instead.”

****

Tayaura met Arik in the woods outside of the entrance gate. She now wore black robes, and as she approached, she affixed a white kitsune mask to her face.

“Is the mask really necessary?” Meosa asked.

“You said that others had joined you. Keeping my identity from them is important. You’ve already failed in that endeavor.”

“They have both seen your father,” Arik said, referring to his warrior pilgrimages against Istvan and Nyoko.

“Be that as it may, they don’t need to know who I am.”

“And you intend to keep that mask on throughout our entire time with them, shinobi-ess?”

Tayaura nodded at Meosa. “My father may have shown the two of you some things—”

“There isn’t much a supposed illusionist like your father can show a kami as old as me, but go on.”

“But there are many things he hasn’t shown you or told you, for that matter. Want an example? The Mask of the Fallen that you have is an example of the lengths an illusionist will go to disguise themselves. Most true illusionists never show their full faces if they can help it, which is why my father wears the hat that he wears.”

“Sengum didn’t seem to have the same style.”

“Your encounter with him was private,” Tayaura told Meosa as she crouched in front of a tree trunk. She produced a throwing knife and carved something into the bark. It looked almost like an animal had done it, but upon further inspection, it was clearly human. “Had you seen him in a more public setting, you’d see Sengum covers his face as well. Last I saw, he wore a hat similar to my father, although his is black.”

Arik remembered Sengum Minamoto and his black robes with white stitching. He would look rather intimidating with a black conical hat, but he wouldn’t be very hidden. Was there a flashiness to the master illusionist that was to his detriment? He did, after all, try to kill them with kunai-triggered explosives.

Another thought came to him as Tayaura began following Arik toward their camp. She clearly knew about Chimaura, but how much did she know? Did she know about Hojo’s replicating skill?

He figured he would give it a shot. “Hojo did something against Sengum that I never asked him about. I just figured it was Chimaura.”

Tayaura dropped before another tree and made her mark, which Arik interpreted she was leaving for Hojo. “What did he do?” she asked without looking up at him.

“He created replicants of himself, enough to completely surround Sengum.”

Tayaura turned to him, this gesture made stranger by her kitsune mask. He could see her eyes beneath the mask, and sensed that they’d widened to some degree. “He… he replicated himself?”

“It’s Chimaura, right?”

“It’s…” Tayaura looked away. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Not so fast,” Meosa said as he came into existence. “We get the runaround from your father all the time. You’re going to tell us something.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What do you know about that power? His replicating ability?”

“I know that it was something he was working on back before… back before our falling out. It’s a ‘forgotten technique,’ as it is known at the School of Illusion. There are techniques that Hidden Warriors of the past were rumored to have worked out, and that is one of them. The other forgotten technique that he mentioned to me once was leaving a double behind.”

“Leaving a double behind? He told me a story about that,” Arik said. “About some Hidden Warrior visiting his brother after he died.”

“Yes, Johmar de Avarga. I’ve heard that story numerous times, variations of it as well.”

“Do you think the two skills are related?”

“Of course they are. If one can create multiple replicants of themselves, they should be able to leave a double behind. The problem, I believe, in accomplishing that skill is pulling it off after someone has died. It requires forethought—and I’m likely saying things that I know nothing about—leaving a Chimauric imprint at the location in question. Johmar and his brother go to a beach, right? Johmar must have left an imprint there.”

“So… you don’t know how to do something like that?” asked Arik.

Tayaura scoffed at this question. “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Meosa laughed. “Which means you don’t.”

“You’ve got quite the mouth on you, kami.”

“No, I’m just smart enough to call someone’s bluff.”

“I never said I was bluffing.”

“There’s no sense in arguing,” Arik told both of them. “If you can do it, that’s great, but I think… my guess would be that only someone at the Hidden Warrior level could do that, and only if they truly studied the technique and worked it out.”

“And you are saying that isn’t me?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

Tayaura turned away from the disciple. “You should take the make-up off your face. You look like an idiot.”

Arik paused, remembering his face was painted and his hair was in three tight ponytails. “I… I need to find some water.”

“Please, just say the word, disciple. I’ll slap that make-up right off your face.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he told Meosa.

“I’ll help you,” Tayaura said, the shift in her tone telling Arik that she may have felt bad about calling him an idiot. Soon, the two came to what was left of a stream that would normally be dedicated to mountain runoff, just about six inches of water now, mucky at that.

“Wait, before you do…” Meosa’s watery form appeared, his hand growing in size. “Are you sure I can’t help?”

“No,” both Tayaura and Arik said at the same time.

“How do you put up with this kami?” Tayaura asked as if Meosa wasn’t there. “I would have taken him high into the mountains and sent him to an early, frozen death by this point.”

“Would you, now? It would be beneath me to ever join forces with an illusionist, so you’d never have that chance, shinobi-ess.”

How do I put up with Meosa? Arik thought as he glanced over to the aqueous kami. “We get along well enough,” he finally said.

“Well enough? We’re practically best friends at this point. You’d be dead without me.”

Maybe… Arik began washing the paint away from his face, the water with an earthy smell to it. He ignored the smell, and once he was done, he let his hair down and pulled it back into one ponytail. “Better?”

“More presentable, yes. Follow me.”

Arik did as Tayaura had instructed, the disciple not at all surprised that she led him to the exact point where they’d branched off, the illusionist yet again marking a tree.

“Do you think he’ll come tonight?” Arik asked, well-aware that Istvan was ready to move into action. Not only that, they were hiding out with a giant skeleton yokai. If there were patrols, the odds of them being discovered were high.

“I don’t know.”

“What did he say last?”

“You’ve traveled with my father. When does he actually reveal the details of his plan? He just told me to wait for him and mark trees if I leave my post. So it could be tonight, it could be tomorrow, it could be a week.”

“For all of our sakes, let’s hope it’s not a week. The less camping we’re forced to do, the better.”

“What do you care about camping?” Tayaura asked Meosa.

“What do I care? Even if I was stuck in a cave for half a millennium, I require, no, I demand, the finer things in life. If not for me, for my host.”

“You two are truly an odd couple.”

“And you and your father aren’t?”

Yet again, Tayaura crouched to make an etching. “You aren’t wrong there. If we’re lucky, he’ll join us within the next day. If not, then I may need to seek him out.”

“In that case, we’re going with you,” Arik said.

“Into a camp of several thousand Crimsonian blades, Nobunaga, and for all I know, Sengum Minamoto? Not to mention whatever kami Nobunaga has with him. Are you insane?”

Meosa laughed. “Says the woman wearing a kitsune mask. Shut up. Of course we’re in this for the long haul, just like you. And while he may seem useless when you first meet him, there’s a reason I have joined forces with the disciple here. You wouldn’t consider me a kami that makes poor choices, would you?”

Tayaura didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought. Keep marking the trees like some sort of horned-up hainu, and hopefully, your father will join us shortly and tell us what he’s been planning all along.”

****

Tayaura and Arik reached the others, Istvan immediately greeting the female illusionist. “Anyway, it’s nice to meet you,” he said, when the masked woman didn’t respond to his initial hello. “This is Nyoko, and I’m Istvan.”

“I’m Basha,” said the giant skeletal yokai in his low, kind voice.

Tayaura, who had already told Arik that she wouldn’t speak to anyone but him, merely looked up at Basha and nodded, her mask hiding any surprise she may have had in meeting the giant skeleton, who now peered down at her.

“So this is the illusionist’s daughter. Where’s the father?”

“Still there,” Arik told Istvan.

A quick look around told the disciple that Nyoko had been busy hunting and gathering, a skill that Arik had a growing fondness for. It was something that Hojo had shown him in a limited capacity, and it was truly helpful in the field.

Laid out on a circle of flat rocks were several dead rabbits, large fibrous seeds, twigs with red bark, and orange berries. Nyoko had also used a hollowed-out piece of wood to collect water.

The mountain woman seemed highly suspicious of Tayaura, to the point that she took a step away from her, ready to spring into action by the look of her stance. This made sense to Arik. A Jadean citizen would be much more wary of an illusionist over a northern man like Istvan, someone who hadn’t grown up with all the shinobi lore. Up until its demise, the School of Illusion had been a very real part of Jadean lives.

Tayaura removed her sword and sat with her legs crossed beneath her, the female illusionist seemingly ignoring everyone. She began stripping the meat from the rabbits.

“So… she’s mute?” Istvan asked.

Meosa came alive, spikes of water lifting off his back and settling. “Hardly. To be honest, the two—three, of you,” he corrected, glancing up to Basha, “are lucky she’s not talking. She’s combative, and her voice is that of an old hag. Very grinding.”

Fwitt!

Tayaura loosed a kunai in Meosa’s direction, the throwing knife passing through where the center of his forehead would have been. It struck a tree and stayed there until she got up to retrieve it.

Meosa laughed. “See what I mean? Nasty shinobi-ess, this one. Short temper, too. You’re lucky not to have to hear her nonsense.”

“Lay off,” Arik told Meosa, wishing in that moment that he could elbow the aqueous kami. While Tayaura was a little standoffish, Meosa seemed to enjoy provoking her, which only made things worse.

“What did it look like down there?” Istvan asked as Nyoko approached Tayaura. She crouched, and joined the female illusionist in preparing the meat. “Was the first camp pretty packed?”

“It’s busy, way too busy for someone in the government, local or otherwise, not to know about it. The fog obscures a lot, but there are thousands of people down there.”

“You saw thousands?”

“Not exactly. This is what she’s seen,” Arik said, motioning to Tayaura. “Crimsonian blades and mercenaries, false shinobi.”

“They aren’t that difficult to beat if you know their weaknesses.”

“Their weaknesses?” Arik recalled what it had been like to see true blades in action, the air electric all around him, their whip-fast movement and skill. The double sword fighters moved through a whirlwind of blades, not unlike the Whispering Sword at its full capacity. He seriously doubted at that moment that Istvan knew what he was talking about, yet Istvan had done pilgrimages in Iga for quite some time, and he surely had challenged his fair share of Crimsonians.

“Their biggest weakness is their speed. Figure out a way to slow them down, which is easy enough with a flaming hammer, and they lose their mettle. I don’t have as much experience fighting the other chi-users, but I’m sure every type has a disadvantage.”

“You mean people like me?”

Istvan nodded to Tayaura. “Or like her.”

“What would be the weak spot for someone who uses Revivaura?” Arik asked, generally intrigued by this line of dialogue.

“I suppose the disadvantage would be their training to help those around them.”

It was through this statement that Arik recognized Istvan’s cunning, which put the northern man closer to an illusionist than a former disciple. He was right; the urge to heal others was something Arik had to constantly suppress during a fight.

“Not only that, most disciples aren’t really trained in combat. You are an exception, as am I. Most are weak.”

“I was trained by a Crimsonian, a man named Master Nankai.”

“Makes sense. My mother was from the Crimson Realm and she trained me from a young age. They all train down there, even the lower-caste citizens. She taught me, and then my uncle trained me too later on. What about my assessment on Revivaura and those who use it? Do you agree with me?”

Arik didn’t answer. “What about illusionists? What do you think their disadvantages would be?”

“This I’ve got to hear,” said Meosa, who seemed to just be tuning back into the conversation.

“I have only fought false shinobi, so I may be going out on a limb here, but they’re not as strong as Crimsonians, and they can’t heal, meaning they’re pretty much useless unless we’re talking about the mind games they are able to play.”

Tayaura locked eyes with Arik and he nodded, both aware that there was so much more to illusionists. “That sounds about right,” Arik said, “although their power can surprise you, if you’re not careful.”

“I’d love to see Chimaura in use, to be honest, but I’ve only ever heard rumors and fairy tales about it. Have you experienced it?”

“Me? No.”

“Liar,” Meosa whispered so only Arik could hear.

“Really? Even training with a master illusionist?”

“We haven’t really done anything that involves Chimaura, mostly because it isn’t something a true illusionist uses all that much,” Arik said, which was partially true.

“So he’s never done something like make a double of himself, or change his features? I heard stories about illusionists doing that.”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Heh. Maybe he’s been here all along, disguised as Basha here,” Meosa said.

The three looked up at the giant yokai, who was seated, and had been listening to their conversation even as Nyoko and Tayaura prepared food. Basha spoke. “Illusionists are illusionists for a reason. I don’t think you’ll be able to get an answer from one, nor would I think you’d be able to get an answer from an illusionist’s student. It is just the way things are here in the Jade Realm.”

“So you haven’t seen Chimaura in action either?” Istvan asked the gashadokuro.

Basha tilted his head up to the trees, his jaw twitching left and right as he considered the question. “Not that I can recall, but I don’t have a great memory.” He tapped a finger on his skull. “I don’t even have a brain, remember?”

Meosa cackled at this statement. Istvan didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t say anything else about it. Soon, the food was ready, cutting the conversation short.

****

Istvan and Nyoko were the first to rest for the night, Arik staying up with Tayaura to watch for Hojo. The two sat in silence for what felt like hours.

“He’ll be here in the morning,” she said at some point that night so only Arik could hear. “Get some rest.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded, her kitsune mask still on her face. She was serious when she said that she wouldn’t let the others see her, which led to Tayaura eating in a different location than them earlier. “I can sense these things. It’s the same reason I was able to stay ahead of him.”

Chimaura, Arik thought, recognizing it yet again in the way Tayaura was able to get a glimpse of her father’s actions before he did them. Arik only hoped she was right. As he looked out at the military installations, he couldn’t shake this feeling that Nobunaga was close by. He didn’t know if his sister was there, but if she was…

“Maybe I will get some rest,” he told Tayaura.

“Sleep well, disciple.”

****

Arik decided to join Tayaura that next morning, before the others were up. Meosa didn’t sleep, and neither did Basha, the two conversing quietly about the past as Arik circled around them. He found the female illusionist away from the group, sitting on the low-hanging tree limb. Tayaura stared off toward the direction of the military installations, hardly registering the fact that Arik was there.

Her mask was in her lap.

“Anything?”

“He’ll be here.” Tayaura finally looked down at Arik, and as she did, he noticed something different in her eyes, a flash of sorrow. “Disciple…”

“Yes?”

“There’s something you need to know, something that I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Arik didn’t say anything. Instead, he motioned for Tayaura to come down from the tree, to join him on the ground. He sat with his legs crossed beneath his body, Tayaura doing the same once she was in front of him.

“What do you remember about that night?” she asked carefully.

“Which one?”

“That night. The attack on your Academy.”

Images came to Arik, from the death of his classmate Xander, to his parents, to getting his fingers cut off before being shoved out the window. It was a painful memory, every part of it.

“I try not to think about it.” he lied.

“You should think about it.”

“What… what do you mean?”

“Think about it, disciple.”

Arik’s eyes widened as the pieces of that fateful night stitched together. He recalled the opponent he had been fending off, a female shinobi, how she had cleaved through his fingers with her blackened blade, the same blade now sheathed at Tayaura’s waist.

His mouth fell open. “It… it was you?”

His movements were instinctual at this point, Arik’s hand going into the front of his robes so he could procure his mask, the disciple suddenly up on his feet, his knees wobbly.

“No…” Tayaura started to say.

Arik gave up his quest to put the Mask of the Fallen over his face and went for the Whispering Sword instead. The blade began to melt as soon as he removed the weapon from its scabbard.

“You were there. Meosa…”

The kami appeared at his side. “Yes? What has gotten into you, disciple? Here I was trying to have a conversation with Basha…”

“She was there. I fought her at the Academy that night.” Arik said, the memories overwhelming him. “She was there when my parents were slaughtered, my friends… the other head priests!”

Meosa flared up, but rather than shoot forward, he tightened his grip on Arik’s arms to prevent him from attacking Tayaura. “Hear her out first, disciple,” he said in Arik’s ear.

“No… no…”

“It isn’t what it seems,” Tayaura told Arik, a pleading look on her face. She had her hand on the grip of her weapon as well, but there was hesitancy in her body language. He knew if he sent the Whispering Sword forward that it would all be over. She wouldn’t be able to stop his advance. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. My father…”

“What does Hojo have to do with this?”

“Nothing,” she told Arik. “But I explained to him what happened that night, and he thought that I should be the one to tell you.”

“Be clear, shinobi-ess,” Meosa said, still preventing Arik from attacking by holding his wrists back.

Arik had already tried several times, the disciple knowing that if he could just flick his wrist forward...

Now that she had mentioned it, he was certain that it had been her, the female shinobi he had fought. He recalled their brief tussle, his surprise in coming to find his incredibly powerful opponent had been a woman.

“I had no intention to kill anyone there and… and I didn’t, disciple. I swear it. I joined the false shinobi to find and execute Sengum Minamoto because my father wouldn’t avenge Hirokuni’s death. Sengum divided his forces into several groups before I joined. I was certain that he would accompany us to your academy. I was going to strike him down then, before the assault could get underway. But he never joined us.”

“You cut off my fingers,” Arik said, even though he was later able to heal them. Compared to what she had been part of, it was a trivial point. He also realized something else in that moment as he stared Tayaura down. While anger was certainly filling him due to her confession, he also understood something else about the female illusionist—her dedication to her disguise.

Arik shook his head, trying to will this notion away. Yet it remained.

Had he heard this confession even a month ago, things would have been very different. But now, he was in the world of the illusionists, and he had seen what they were capable of. He knew how hard it must have been to maintain her disguise if Tayaura was actually telling the truth.

“I would never do something like that. I swear to you, disciple.” Shame took shape in the way she held her body, her head tilted down, Tayaura no longer able to make eye contact with Arik. “But I thought I was close. And it was only after that terrible night that Sengum rooted me out. I didn’t kill anyone at your Academy, but you, you attacked me, one of the only disciples to truly fight back. I couldn’t let myself die there, not when I was that close.”

“What about Master Guri Yarna? If you were there, you were there when they spared his life.”

“I was. I can tell you he wasn’t thrilled by what happened. But he never spoke directly to me, only to Sengum’s lieutenant. He was also taken away with his wrists shackled, if that means anything.”

“Against his will?”

“Yes, disciple.”

Meosa weighed in. “It would make sense, my boy. Being the type of warlord Nobunaga is, he likely wants to ensure that he can live a long and prosperous life, while also making sure his enemies aren’t given the same advantage. Having a head priest in your inner circle, and potentially being the only person to have one in all of Taomoni, would give him an incredible advantage. Not only that, if he does conquer your realm, he can have the academies rebuilt to glorify him, in a way, showing the people of the Onyx Realm that he wasn’t quite as ruthless as they thought. Think about it. It wasn’t Crimsonians that attacked your academy. It was illusionists. False shinobi.”

A dark look came over Tayaura’s face. “Yes, the false shinobi.”

Arik slowly lowered his chin, the tension somewhat leaving him.

“Are we good here, disciple? Or do I still need to hold you back?”

“We’re… we’re good.” Arik returned his sword to its scabbard, tension trickling down his arms.

“I’m sorry, disciple,” Tayaura said. “And I’m sorry you had to learn about it this way. If it had been my choice, I would have waited until… until after we have shared a victory to tell you. But my father insisted that I confess the next time I saw you. Even on our way back to the camp here, I could have told you then, but it just didn’t feel right. It still doesn’t feel right. But I thought about it over the night. I know what it’s like to lose a family member. And I’m sorry that your parents had to… that they had to die that way. But I promise you one thing.”

Arik looked up at the female illusionist. “Yes?”

“I will help you rescue your sister when the time comes. I owe you that much.”

.Chapter Seven.

“The truth has never been what you wanted it to be.”

–Prince Tenzin of the Jade Realm’s words to his third wife, Dawan, following the War of Gods in Year 789. Their marriage lasted for the rest of her life.

Arik was slightly startled when he saw a man in a conical hat approach, the bottom of his face covered by a wooden bird beak that had been painted red. The man, who wore flowing crimson robes, carried ten bird cages affixed to a long staff cast across his shoulders, a bag or two at his side.

“Relax, it’s him,” Arik said just as Istvan was about to draw his hammer, Nyoko already with her axe at the ready.

“This… this is the illusionist?” Istvan asked for both of them.

Tayaura, who had been sitting alone near a tree, approached her father. She helped him remove the bird cages from his back and set them on the ground, the sparrows inside chirping wildly. There had to be close to a hundred of them.

Hojo tilted his head back to examine his daughter and offered her a short nod, Tayaura once again in her kitsune mask.

“I was wondering when you would come back,” said Basha, cutting any strange tension the group may have been feeling with Hojo’s sudden and bizarre appearance.

“Yes, it took longer than I would have liked. My apologies.”

Meosa’s form solidified. “Well, if it isn’t our favorite illusionist. I’m guessing you are wondering why we have a few new friends.”

Hojo shifted his focus to Istvan and Nyoko. “I am indeed. Why are they here?”

“I can explain.” Arik quickly caught Hojo up, skipping over the fact that Istvan had more or less pressured him to come along. He told them how he had trained with Akamatsu, and explained delicately how things had gone poorly in the end. As he spoke, Arik noticed Tayaura move to some of the trees and begin chipping away at the bark with her kunai.

“I see,” Hojo said once he had finished his explanation. “And you better understand your weapon now?”

Arik nodded.

Hojo tilted his chin toward a branch behind him. “Prove it to me.”

Arik drew the sword and sent it forward, the two blades twisting together and scissoring through a far-off branch. It landed a few feet behind the bird cages, startling the sparrows inside.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” said Istvan.

“Akamatsu did well. And you did well, even if your interaction with him ultimately ended in tragedy.” Hojo shifted his gaze to Nyoko and Istvan. “There is one problem.”

“What’s that?” Arik returned his sword to its scabbard.

“I only brought enough disguises for the three of us.” Hojo removed the pack on his back, and showed Arik that there were a pair of Crimsonian robes inside. He had also procured two square hats, which were collapsible.

“And you are going as…?”

“A bird monger.”

So that’s what those people are, Arik thought, recalling some of the Crimsonians he’d seen outside the first installation.

“I hate to interrupt here, but I don’t quite understand what it is you intend to do with these birds,” Istvan told him.

“Yes, the sparrows,” said Hojo. “They are lovely, aren’t they?”

Istvan raised an eyebrow at the master illusionist. “It makes sense you don’t have robes for us, but… but don’t count us out, here.” He gestured to Nyoko. “We still want part of the action.”

“We can discuss that.”

The northern man waited for Hojo to continue, and when he didn’t, he spoke again. “Discuss which part, illusionist?”

“All parts. We will start with the sparrows. I need you all to gather wood shavings, small ones.”

Nyoko began doing as instructed without any further questioning, the Jadean woman using a knife to start in on one of the trees. The difference in her reaction to Hojo’s request when compared to Istvan’s was noticeable. Even though she hadn’t said much, if anything at all, there was a hint of respect and fear coming from the mountain woman. After all, Nyoko was from the realm of Chimaura. She knew what Hojo was capable of.

Istvan, however, was a northerner, and like Arik, he had questions: “So… you just want us to gather wood shavings?”

“Yes. I will help you.” Hojo produced the crystal kunai from his robes. He started gathering the wood shavings alongside Tayaura, the master illusionist remaining in his conical hat and his bird mask. Feeling more like a Jadean than a man from the Onyx Realm, Arik joined them, using one of his kunai to gather wood shavings in his palm.

Istvan stepped over to Arik. “We aren’t even going to ask why we are doing this?”

It was Meosa who replied this time. “The day you figure out an illusionist will be the day that they have truly conned you for good. I’ve given up trying to understand what it is they are up to. My advice? Just go with it.”

“How familiar are you with the Jade-Crimson War of Shadows?” Hojo asked Istvan as he continued to gather wood shavings.

“That was nearly a thousand years ago.”

“Yes, it was. During that war, there was a battle for present-day Iga that left that ancient city in ruins by the end. Fire.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“The fire came from the birds, the same sparrows that frequent the Valleys of the Unknown, the same you may have seen in the air here. That’s why there are bird mongers at the three camps. The bird mongers are there to capture and either sell or kill the sparrows. Some of the birds, the ones with golden tail feathers, are worth money to an itako. As you can see, those are the ones I have here.” Hojo motioned toward his bird cages, all of the sparrows with golden tails.

“You seriously collected all of those?” asked Istvan.

“From the three installations, yes. Not only that, I had to follow them to see where they were nesting. While the historical burning of Iga is common knowledge, not many know how it happened so long ago, not even my fellow instructors, people like Sengum Minamoto.”

“So, how did Iga burn, then?”

“It was the sparrows.” Hojo paused and looked up at the northerner. “You may be able to notice the buildings from the cliff nearby, all of which have been hastily erected, made out of wood and covered with thatched roofs. These are similar to the buildings of Iga during the 700s. The sparrows nest beneath the roofs. And that’s not the only thing beneath some of these coverings—explosives, weapons, rations.”

“So you have gathered sparrows with golden tail feathers to bring fire to these buildings. Am I understanding this correctly?”

Meosa laughed bitterly at Istvan’s question. “Now, he’s got me curious. I’m ashamed to say that I’m not familiar with the War of Shadows reference. Believe it or not, that was actually before my time.”

“Mine as well,” said Basha.

“Yes, you are understanding it correctly,” Hojo told Istvan. “The sparrows will bring the fire. Now, help me gather wood shavings.”

“How exactly are the birds going to help you bring fire?”

“I’ll show you, but first we will need more wood shavings.”

Istvan shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Listen to him,” Meosa told Arik, “he’s just like you, disciple.”

“We’re going to use a flammable wax to attach the wood shavings to the sparrows’ legs,” Hojo explained. “Then, I’m going to take the birds to the camp and light each one as I release them. They will return to their nests, and when they do, the fires will start. We will destroy the three installations in the process.”

Skepticism spread across Istvan’s face. “Do you think that will actually work?”

“I’ve tested it before, back when I was an instructor at the School of Illusion.”

“All of the sparrows will die,” said Nyoko, the Jadean woman looking up from the shavings she had already collected.

“Yes, that is the case, sadly. But we have to keep the much bigger picture in mind. And it wasn’t easy, you know, gathering these birds. I chose them because of the specific nests that they will return to. A bird always returns to its nest, and in a way”—Hojo made eye contact with Arik—“humans are no different. Collect as many wood shavings as you can, and as I said, the smaller the better. This will take us into the afternoon to prepare. Then, the three of us will begin our assault.”

“What about us?” Istvan asked, motioning to Nyoko and Basha. “Don’t think that we are going to sit back and let you have all the glory.”

“Believe me when I tell you it is not glory that I am interested in. But worry not, I have a plan for you as well. Let’s gather the wood shavings first and then we will go over it.”

****

The flammable wax that Hojo had prepared was incredibly sticky, easily able to accommodate the wood shavings and stay on the sparrows’ legs. As they soon discovered, preparing each bird was easier with two people, one to hold it while the other affixed the small bits of wood. Hojo was very specific about which bird went in which cage, another reason it took them some time to prepare all one hundred.

“And you are going to light each one individually?” Istvan asked as they finished up. He was just about to place his hands on his waist when Hojo stopped him.

“Everyone needs to thoroughly wash their hands. The wax can be toxic. And yes, to answer your question, I am going to light each one individually.”

“I’ll save you all the trouble.” Meosa cycled around each of them, cleaning their hands. “It’s the least I can do.” The sparrows now all in their cages and ready, Hojo turned to Arik and Tayaura and instructed them to dress in their disguises.

Arik retrieved the Crimsonian robes that Hojo had procured and one of the square hats. He stepped away from the group and began changing, finding it hard to look down and see the blood-red clothing hanging from his form. He much preferred the dark blues and purples that the illusionist wore, that or white, like he had at the Academy of Healing Arts.

After placing the Mask of the Fallen on his face and tying it off behind his head, Arik put on the square hat, his vision now affected by the slit-like viewing pane at the front of the hat. He returned to find Istvan having a heated discussion with Hojo: “We didn’t come this far to let the three of you do all the work. Nyoko and I, we both have our reasons, we both want to help.”

“And you will be a help, as I’ve told you. Once you can see the fire, your role will be assisting our escape.” Hojo motioned toward the north. “This is the area where we will make our leave, not far from the front gates of the first installation. That’s where we will need you. We’ll fight them back at that point, and escape together.”

“What about Nobunaga and Sengum Minamoto?” Arik asked, which was something that Hojo hadn’t covered yet. “Did you see them there?”

“I’ll get to that, disciple.”

“We can get some robes for ourselves,” Istvan began to say, and just as he was starting to turn away, he stopped. Against his will, his head began to swivel back to Hojo.

Arik glanced at Hojo. It seemed like the master illusionist had quit breathing, his eyes fixated on Istvan, the bottom of his face still covered by the wooden bird beak.

Chimaura… Arik thought once Istvan began to nod.

“Yes, we will aid you in your escape.”

Arik looked over to Nyoko, who had shied away from Hojo, the quiet woman now focused on the tips of her leather boots.

She knows.

“And that, disciple, is why you don’t argue with an illusionist,” Meosa said so only Arik could hear.

“We will provide support.” This voice belonged to Basha, who was still seated with his skeletal spine against the tree, his big femur club on the ground next to him. “And then my debt to you will be paid.”

“That it will,” Hojo told the gashadokuro. “And I appreciate the fact you’ve come this far.”

“Back to Sukitoma after, hmmm?” Meosa asked Basha.

“Me? Likely so. I hope there aren’t too many tourists around the lake when I return.”

Meosa laughed, and as he did, Istvan snapped out of his Chimauric spell. “So we will know when we see fire, right?”

Hojo placed a hand on the northern man’s muscled shoulder and patted it. “That’s right. That’s when you will know.” He shifted his focus to Arik. “You asked about Nobunaga and Sengum Minamoto. Yes, they are there.”

“Kogu?”

“No, unfortunately not. before I left, I learned that Nobunaga will be gathering at the first camp not long from now to speak with some of his elite guards. This is when we will strike.”

“Strike Nobunaga?”

Even though this was precisely what Arik had signed up for, this fact struck him at that moment. This is what it all boils down to, he reminded himself. This is why you have the Whispering Sword.

Arik cleared his throat. “And what about Sengum Minamoto? Will he be there?”

“No, the false shinobi are at the third installation, the third camp, to the northeast. I have been especially careful gathering sparrows around there, but I’ve not been spotted. I would know if I’d been spotted.”

Tayaura approached, now in her Crimsonian garb. Aside from the clothing, Arik noticed something different about her. Hojo’s daughter looked more like a man, and it was only after she adjusted the front of her robes that he saw that she had wrapped her sanjaku cloth tightly around her chest to conceal her breasts.

Tayaura helped Hojo balance the staff across his shoulders, five bird cages on each side. “We will see you soon,” was all Hojo told Istvan, Yoko, and Basha before they set off.

****

Once they were away from Istvan and Nyoko, their forms covered in shadows from the foliage, Tayaura spoke to her father.

“How should we attack?”

“You should only attack once the fires start. The kami that is with Nobunaga may be able to put some of the fires out, but I expect once the explosions begin, that there will be no way for it to stop the destruction.”

“We have to be extra careful,” said Meosa, now invisible and floating somewhere off to Arik’s left by the sound of his voice. “If Enenra notices me, she will sound the alarm, and I will have to fight her.”

“Do you think you can beat her?” Arik asked.

“That remains to be seen. And if the two of us are fighting, that means I won’t be able to protect you as much as I would like.”

“That’s kind of you, but I’m ready.” Arik swallowed hard.

“Famous last words, my boy.”

Hojo spoke. “As much as you may want to confront him before, wait until the fire comes to strike Nobunaga down. Imagine if you could get your revenge without ever even being noticed, your blade quietly cutting through the confusion and piercing his heart. Shadow-child, you will do all the talking, if any is necessary, to get into the first camp itself, to be part of the audience around Nobunaga. As you know, I will have to hold back to release the sparrows. Once they are on fire…”

Tayaura nodded. “Yes, Father. Will you go for Sengum Minamoto alone?”

Hojo grunted a response. “I will. Do not follow after me. As much as you want to believe this is between you and him, it is between Sengum and me. Once the sparrows are released, and I see that the two of you have done what needs to be done, I will find Sengum. Mark my words.”

“I can’t let you do that alone.”

Hojo stopped, and slowly turned to his daughter, careful of the bird cages. “You don’t have a choice. Escape with the disciple, and wait for me at the meeting place.”

“The meeting place?”

“Where you made camp. If I don’t come within a day, go on without me.”

“As… as you wish, Father,” Tayaura finally said, the female illusionist bowing her head as much as her square hat would let her.

****

Arik and Tayaura parted ways with Hojo, who would use a different entrance, which according to him would be the best location to release the flaming sparrows. As the disciple continued to follow Tayaura to the first camp, he realized that he was starting to have as much faith in her as he did her father, even with what she had done back at his academy. He knew that with the training she had received that they would be able to get inside, and that she would instruct him in what to do once they arrived.

There was one question that he had, however, something that had been on his mind since Hojo had first mentioned it.

“What is Hidden Warrior Sickness, exactly?” Arik asked, just as they were about to reach the merchants and other services outside the walls of the first camp. There were wooly kayno lined up now, indicating that more supplies were being transported in, each of their loads covered by thick canvas marked with what Arik supposed were fake Jadean government flags.

“Hidden Warrior Sickness?” Tayaura turned, and Arik could see through the slit on the front of her square hat that her eyes had narrowed on him. “You already know what it is.”

“He’s only mentioned it to me briefly, mostly focusing on a place that all illusionists hope to go, some province.”

“‘A province that no one has ever been to, a place they do not know, or strangers or friends, where they can buy things with gold and silver they don’t have, eat food that no one has provided for them, get drunk without drinking alcohol, and study any art in the world. It is a place that is both nowhere and everywhere, a place that they cannot go because they are already there, where they can freely disguise themselves as whatever they would like, and sleep out in the open without shelter. A place where they can cure sadness, a province that simply exists because of the fact that it doesn’t exist.’ I’ve heard the poem many times, disciple.”

“That’s a poem?” Meosa asked.

“And what does it mean?”

“Like I said, you already know what it means, disciple. You tell me what it means.”

“Does it mean that using Chimaura too much can… can distort one’s concept of a person and a place? Distort who they are or maybe who they were, eventually driving someone mad even though they aren’t crazy—something like that?”

Tayaura nodded. “Actually, that’s pretty close. I’m assuming my father has told you about using Chimaura and likely emphasizing that its usage should be a last resort. It is not like the other aspects of chi, and according to Hidden Warriors of the past, it has a breaking point. I believe, or I should say that we believe, that there is a breaking point because of how powerful Chimaura actually is. With it, you can do a number of remarkable and wondrous things. It is also the chi style that works best when paired with the other two.”

“Three.”

“Yokaura? That isn’t one that is studied.”

Arik thought of the feats he had seen Hojo perform, from changing facial features to controlling other people’s minds. He also remembered when the master illusionist had replicated himself, and how he usually seemed to be a step ahead, unless it came to dealing with other illusionists.

“Do you need a longer explanation or can we continue?”

“So Chimaura is what drives Hidden Warrior Sickness, which is a mental ailment. And Hojo believes he is suffering from it.”

“He is clearly suffering from it, my boy,” Meosa said, making his presence known. “Have you not seen the twitching? Have you not seen his general demeanor or the pallor of his skin? Have you not heard the things he murmurs about?”

“Don’t give into his madness, kami,” Tayaura said, defiance in her voice. “My father is fine. He has convinced himself that Hidden Warrior Sickness is killing him. But I don’t believe it. I have met and studied with masters that are much older than him, at least when I was younger I did.”

“So you think he’s making it up?” Arik asked.

“No.” Tayaura grew quiet for a moment. “He certainly has noticed some signs of it, but I think he is far from the point of no return. I’ve answered enough of your questions for now. Let me handle things once we get to the gate.”

.Chapter Eight.

“In healing others, you are actually healing yourself.”

–Master Nongrat Eldegai in his book A Healing Mind, Third Edition, Ezochi Revivaura Books, Year 1336, Page 71.

There was one person Arik could channel as they approached the front gate of the first camp. He had trained with the man, and he had seen firsthand the sense of pride that the combat veteran carried in his body posture, a true sense of pride and certainty. Shoulders back, confidence in the way that he held himself, chin tilted up slightly beneath his square hat as if he were daring for someone to challenge him, the disciple felt a pang of regret as he tried his best to mirror the late Akamatsu.

And it worked.

Neither Arik nor Tayaura needed to say anything to the guards at the front, the two sentries letting them pass with little more than a grunt. The female illusionist also carried herself in a different way, not as light on her feet as she had been previously. Even though she didn’t have that large of a frame, she walked as if she were over seven feet tall, defiance in her eyes, certainty in her gait.

“Would you look at the two of you,” Meosa whispered to Arik, the sudden appearance of his voice jarring the disciple as they came to a horse stable. “If being rebels doesn’t pan out, you could always sign up to be Crimsonian blades. Kidding, disciple. But listen, now that I have your attention, there’s another thing we need to discuss. Once we get closer to Nobunaga, I will have to shrink to my smallest form. This means it may take me a moment to spring into action if, and more likely, when things start up. I just want you to be aware of that.”

Arik nodded as the two came around a series of pallets with rations on them. He could see siege weapons beyond, men and women in Crimsonian clothing checking them, those with the square hats and other interesting headgear either patrolling or standing guard. Where was Nobunaga? Where was the speech set to take place?

Arik’s question was answered once he looked to the west to see that a stage had been erected, Crimsonian blades starting to gather around it. The blades all stood at attention, weapons sheathed, left arms down at their side and their right behind their backs. They carried a multitude of weapons, from a pair of swords like they used in Mogra to great axes. False shinobi began to conjure as well, the mercenaries standing around in black masks like the ones they had worn when they attacked the Academy.

“Ah, I believe we have found our crowd,” Meosa said as Arik and Tayaura turned in the direction of the gathering blades.

Arik and Tayaura found a place several rows back from the stage, the female illusionist instinctively making sure that they were in range for Arik to use his weapon. A building beside the stage served as an area for Nobunaga and his counsel to wait until the time came to speak, one without a frontward-facing access point.

There was no murmuring from the crowd, the silence only broken by a few sparrows that flew overhead.

Arik spotted a bird monger, not Hojo, the thin man using a long stick with the net on it to swipe one of the birds out of the air. His eyes darted from the bird monger to one of the thatched roofs. If what Hojo was planning worked, it would be genius-level strategy.

More soldiers and sellswords took their places behind Arik and Tayaura, to the point that the disciple was sure there were over several hundred people now awaiting to hear what Nobunaga had to say.

The crowd continued to grow over the next fifteen minutes, Arik not at all surprised to see two familiar faces finally emerge from a set of crimson curtains and take their place on the left side of the stage.

It was strange to think that he had once fought both of them, the woman on the right with two blades that were not as long as traditional swords, a haori cape draped over her shoulders, the cape white with blooming butterflies. Her long dark hair was braided into two ponytails and tied off at the back of her head with a blue ribbon.

Arik didn’t know her name, but he recalled what it had been like to fight the woman at the tournament in Mogra, how he had ultimately defeated her, and how Nobunaga had spared her life. There was something more lethal about her now, something about her face as she scanned the crowd that told Arik she had changed since they’d last met.

He also knew the man standing next to her, Tatum, whom Arik had once battled in a warrior pilgrimage in Iga, the same man who had ultimately won the tournament in the South. On his head was a square hat with vertical markings weaved into it. Rather than the sleeveless robes that he had worn previously, the Crimsonian man was now dressed in full crimson regalia. As he had worn before, Tatum donned a veil of perforated gray material beneath his mask, which hung past his chin.

The Mask of the Fallen knew what was about to happen. Arik saw a red line connect to Tatum’s neck, another to the unnamed Crimsonian woman’s stomach.

Arik could have sworn he’d heard a faint voice at the back of his head tell him it was ready, but by this point, a new person had joined Tatum and the Crimsonian woman on the stage. Arik recognized this man as one of Master Altai’s students, the same student who had later killed the man at Nobunaga’s instruction.

Like Tatum, Sonjin also wore crimson robes, but rather than vertical lines on his square hat, the eye openings were rimmed in red. He took his place behind the other two, Sonjin resting his hands on the grip of both his swords in case he needed to draw them in a flash.

Sengum Minamoto pressed through the curtain, his appearance taking Arik by surprise. The Hidden Warrior was now in a black conical hat similar to Hojo’s, a jagged slit cut into the front. He was joined by three false shinobi, each in black and robes, their faces obscured by masks similar to Arik’s, but certainly not enchanted.

Arik noticed Tayaura tense up beside him, a hint of electricity in the air between them. Did she know more about Thunderaura than she was letting on?

“Remember what Hojo said,” Arik whispered to her, not certain if the female illusionist heard him at that moment.

“If she tries anything I will stop her, disciple,” Meosa said. “I respect her father enough to honor his death wish.”

“Death wish?”

“Hojo will die here if he confronts Sengum Minamoto. Mark my words.”

Hearing Hojo’s name mentioned in the same sentence as death caused a dip in his spirit and confidence. Arik didn’t want Hojo to die, or succumb to any sickness he may or may not have had. “What… what makes you say that?” Arik whispered, even quieter now.

“Something that Sukitoma said in passing. He told Hojo that he would know when the time was right, and I believe he is referring to what is about to happen here. That old crystal kami can be quite prescient; if I had listened to him five hundred years ago, I likely wouldn’t have ended up trapped in the cave. But that is neither here nor there, my boy. Someone else is coming.”

Now it was Arik’s turn to tense up as he saw Master Guri Yarna, the head priest at the Academy of Healing Arts in two sets of robes, orange over white, the hood over his head decorated with golden flowers. He took a place at the back of the stage, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe.

The final man to step out was the shortest of all of them, Nobunaga, with black hair and a long mustache that was now braided and decorated with crimson beads. Like Master Guri Yarna, Nobunaga wore several sets of robes, but the bulk beneath his clothing told Arik that there was armor as well. This didn’t stop the Mask of the Fallen from locating a kill point, Arik watching as a red string of energy connected to the left side of his torso.

After a long, calculated pause, the Crimsonian warlord came to the front of the stage and brought a fist across his chest. The blades in the crowd did the same, Arik quickly copying the gesture in unison.

Come on, Hojo, Arik thought, his eyes darting to the sky, hoping to see flaming sparrows. Come on…

He had the perfect shot at Nobunaga, but he couldn’t take it.

****

Nobunaga offered his blades, and the other mercenaries that had gathered, a sinister smile that bordered on a scowl. Everyone in the vicinity grew quiet, and remained this way for what felt like ages before the warlord finally spoke.

“We are ahead of schedule,” Nobunaga said, after more guards filed out, these ones with large shields and standing between Nobunaga and the crowd. “Ahead of schedule,” Nobunaga said again, louder now, satisfaction in his voice. “Tomorrow, we will move our forces north, and begin our campaign against the treacherous Onyx Realm. This is the moment all of you have trained for, that your fathers have prayed for. From those that came up through the combat academies to those like myself, born from nothing and raised to fight for everything that should be mine.”

“Everything that should be his?” Meosa sneered. “Talk about a deluded yamachichi-fed moron with daddy issues. Imagine if…”

A breeze picked up, and as it did, Meosa’s voice disappeared.

Enenra… Arik thought as he returned his focus to Nobunaga.

“Just over five hundred years ago, the Onyxians tried to brutally take our realm. You’ve heard the stories, and you know the legend as well as I do. Had it not been for the War Priest, blessed be his name, our country would have succumbed to their villainous ways. The grandmothers of your grandmothers would have been taken by them, raped and savagely beaten, enslaved, and all of you, those that are of Crimsonian blood, would be weak, and fallow. We would be at their mercy. But the War Priest ended the conflict, and now, I am picking up where he left off. Yet I am no priest, nor will there be any healing when I am finished with the Onyx Realm. No, luckily for all of you and your families, I am nothing like Coro Pache, and I intend to do what he did not do—conquer. I intend to bring all of Taomoni to its knees. This is our moment.”

Nobunaga motioned to the curtains.

A man was dragged out by a pair of guards, his arms and legs shackled, a dark cloth over his face and tied around his neck. The guards brought him forward and forcibly set him down onto his knees. Another square-hatted Crimsonian stepped onto the stage with a pillow that had two knives with golden handles resting on it.

“A war is to come between the Crimson and the Onyx Realm.” Nobunaga placed his hand on the man’s cloaked head, his thumb outlining the prisoner’s eye socket. “We hope through this sacrifice that it will be swift. As the old saying goes, ‘Blood spilled hidden, veiled,’ represents our relationship with the Jade Realm.”

Come on, Hojo… Arik thought again as Nobunaga retrieved one of the golden daggers.

The warlord removed his thumb and drove the knife down into the man’s eye socket, leaving the dagger there as one of his guards kept the Jadean still. Another thought came to Arik as he watched the horrendous act. Why isn’t the man screaming? He was clearly convulsing, but no sounds were coming out, as if his lips had been stitched together.

“May your blind and silent sacrifice be an omen in our favor.” Nobunaga drove the second golden dagger into the man’s other eye socket. The prisoner spasmed; the guards lugged the Jadean man away as Nobunaga turned back to the crowd, a snarl on his face. “Sacrifices are important for what we must do next.”

Arik glanced at Tatum and the double-bladed woman he had once fought, hoping for some sign of empathy. When he didn’t find it, he shifted his gaze to Master Guri Yarna, who merely kept his head bowed, and from there to Sengum Minamoto, who had his chin tilted up, a cracked grin visible in the shade provided by his black conical hat.

“Yes, as you all should know by now, sacrifices are important. But so are new beginnings. This is why I have a northern girl in Tenrikyo who will become queen of the Onyx Realm when she is older. She will be married to my son, and our two realms will be united. So, we have a sacrifice from the Jade Realm, we have a new beginning from the Onyx Realm, and from my home, the Crimson Realm, we have a continuation of our nature, of our ancestors, those of nomadic warriors.”

“A northern girl?” Arik whispered so Meosa could hear him. “That has to be my sister.”

“Easy, disciple,” Meosa said, his voice barely audible.

What Arik wouldn’t have given in that moment to send his blade whispering forward and stopping Nobunaga. He even saw himself going through the motions, drawing his sword, putting all of his power into it as Akamatsu had shown him. Yet he remained standing at attention, waiting for Hojo’s signal as more questions sprung forth from the back of his mind. What if Hojo had failed? What if the sparrows hadn’t reached their targets?

What if he was supposed to strike now?

Panic rose in Arik’s chest.

They were in the belly of the enemy, and if the attack wasn’t going to work as planned, it would also mean that Istvan, Nyoko, and Basha wouldn’t be signaled, that Arik and Tayaura would have to fight an untold number of mercenaries and Crimsonian blades if they went for an assassination. Not only that, Sengum Minamoto was on the stage, as was Tatum, Sonjin, and the woman Arik had once fought, all capable warriors without the addition of the wind kami Enenra.

The disciple blinked rapidly, trying to ignore the red lines that the Mask of the Fallen was providing, trying to disregard the beads of sweat that appeared across his forehead.

It was all coming at him so quickly.

His proximity to Nobunaga, his sister, the threat his country faced with the warlord’s buildup of mercenaries and siege engines. It was too much. He had to act. But he also had to trust the master illusionist, trust that Hojo was operating behind the scenes as he always was, trust in the process.

Meosa’s voice did little to calm him. “Your heart feels like it’s going to explode, disciple, relax.”

Arik glanced as best he could to Tayaura, who stood at attention just like the others, nothing distinguishable between the female illusionist and those around her.

Be like Tayaura, Arik reminded himself.

Become a Crimsonian.

(Become a Crimsonian.)

Arik let out a short breath and remained in his place.

“The rest of the prisoners that we have taken from Iga and the province will be executed tonight. Those of you that wish to use their bodies for test cutting are encouraged to do so.” Nobunaga’s nostrils flared wide as he offered his men the warlord’s equivalent of a grin. “Do not hold back once we reach the border. Every northern man, woman, and child must die until we reach the capital. Any of the property confiscated belongs to our realm. You may do what you’d like with the people themselves. Do what they would have done to your grandmothers. I want all of us to enjoy the spoils of war together, and I look forward to seeing the heads that you bring me.” Nobunaga laughed bitterly. “I also look forward to taking a few myself.”

A sparrow flew directly over Nobunaga’s head, its body on fire.

Another one followed, some of the blades in the crowd spotting it and turning to the second sparrow as it reached its nest beneath one of the thatched roofs. Two more flaming sparrows appeared.

Arik exchanged glances with Tayaura and she nodded.

It was time.

****

Shock traced across Nobunaga’s face as the Whispering Sword struck the opening on his torso.

To witness all hell break loose, Arik’s sword scissoring back in his direction, cutting through the ranks of Crimsonian blades and mercenaries as if a sea were parting, would be something the disciple would never forget.

This was the moment he’d been preparing for. Arik had struck his target.

Arik’s inner celebration was cut short once a wind kicked up, Meosa roaring into action. The aqueous kami twisted into a spiraling column of water that met a furious tornado, Arik barely seeing the two kami as they collided.

More flaming sparrows landed on their targets, plumes of fire already starting up.

Disregarding all the combat forms he had obsessed over, Arik focused on bringing down as many opponents as he could, the Whispering Sword slicing through flesh and bone. He lost his square hat in the process, the disciple desperately trying to reach the stage, where Nobunaga was being assisted by Master Guri Yarna.

Had Nobunaga seen him? Did he know who was coming for him?

Arik hoped so.

He felt the ground rumble as explosive oils were detonated, as pandemonium blanketed Nobunaga’s supply chain. The fog of slaughter was complicated by bursts of water and gusts of wind, Meosa and Enenra battling above, the dynamics of their fight affecting everyone below.

A single thought came to the disciple as he took on a pair of Crimsonian blades standing in his way, as he tried to reach Nobunaga to finish the job he’d started. Arik had targeted the wrong person. He should have targeted Master Guri Yarna, Nobunaga’s healer. But hearing the warlord’s speech had enraged him to the point that upon seeing Hojo’s signal, releasing the Whispering Sword felt almost cathartic.

I can reach him. Arik bolted past the two blades he had been engaging, both with multiple lacerations.

His sword whipped forward again and met a sudden resistance.

The twin-bladed fighter named Sonjin, who had trained under and later betrayed Master Altai, now stood in Arik’s direct path, staring him down. With Thunderaura, and clear combat prowess, Sonjin was fast enough to swat away Arik’s multitude of attacks.

Not only that, his mastery over the combat branch of chi left the air sparking with electricity. Arik felt as if he’d slowed down once Sonjin appeared directly in front of the disciple and brought one of his blades across the front of his chest.

The sting, the burning sensation of such a deep cut—Arik might not have been able to recover from the wound had Sonjin been just six inches closer, but as it stood, especially with the adrenaline racing through him, he jumped backward, prepared to respond.

He took a few more steps to the side, healing the wound as his sword launched into overdrive, the disciple blendering up a wall of defense between Arik and Sonjin. A quick glance up to the stage revealed to him that Nobunaga was getting away. Arik was sure now that the warlord had some sort of escape plan, one that would be both aided and complicated by the smoke, fire, and explosions.

Hojo’s strategy was working.

In glancing up at the stage, Arik also saw Tayaura, the female illusionist fighting the group of false shinobi that had joined Sengum Minamoto. The master illusionist himself was relatively relaxed, the expression on his face obscured by his black conical hat as he stood back and watched the ensuing madness.

“Careful, my boy!” Meosa shouted as wind buffeted the ground in front of Arik. It swelled upward and came crashing down, the wind burrowing, kicking up dirt and debris before Enenra ultimately lifted in an upward arc toward the stage to join Nobunaga.

“Disciple!” Meosa said, his voice all around the disciple now. “Should we go after them? Say the word, I’ll get us there!”

It was a split-second decision, one complicated by the fact that Arik was still defending against Sonjin. “No,” Arik said, playing everything out in his mind’s eye. “We’ll do it together. Take me to Tayaura.”

“Right!” Meosa sprang toward Sonjin, instantly sweeping the Crimsonian blade off his feet. “Die, gaki-breath!”

Tatum and the female blade came at Arik from a different direction, as if they had been waiting for their opening. Arik’s sword warped back into its normal shape as he met Tatum’s blade, their weapons grinding together. “I recognize you,” Tatum said, his voice on edge considering what was happening all around him. “From Iga… from… from Mogra.”

“You’ve chosen the wrong side.” Arik channeled his chi into the center of his blade as their weapons met again.

Whoosh!

Tatum was thrust backward by a burst of energy, the One-Count Strike successfully executed. It even managed to take down the female blade behind him in the process, the two spilling over one another, the woman’s haori cape coming up and over her shoulders.

Arik turned his focus to Tayaura.

She was facing off against four false shinobi now, all of whom had surrounded her, the female illusionist no longer wearing her square hat, some of her hair matted to her forehead.

It was clear that she was going to be overwhelmed soon.

“Meosa, Tayaura!” Arik took a running leap forward, and as he did the aqueous kami came to him, enhancing his action and sending the disciple up into the air propelled by a stream of water.

Arik landed back to back with Tayaura, the Whispering Sword instantly losing its shape. It happened in a matter of seconds, the Mask of the Fallen pointing out the kill zones, Arik executing his next attack with precision, the sword whispering as it slayed the four false shinobi.

An explosion somewhere off to the left caused Arik to lose his balance and skitter off to the side.

The disciple pushed back to his feet. He turned to Tayaura and his limbs went weak, a dread hitting his very core. Sengum Minamoto stood before the female illusionist, Sengum’s form slowly splitting into two, then three, then four replicas as Tayaura remained caught in his spell.

Sengum and his replicas all drove their blades to Tayaura at once, but only one delivered the actual deathstrike, the tip of the sword pressing out of the small of her back.

Tayaura shifted her head down.

Sengum Minamoto took her in with a half sneer on his face, oblivious to the fact that Hojo had appeared behind him holding the crystal kunai.

****

What happened next cut through the explosions, the shouts and screams, even the wall of water that Meosa had erected to stop anyone from interfering. There would be points in the weeks to come that Arik would recall the moment in which Chimaura had somehow distorted the space-time continuum, everything changing in the blink of an eye.

Before Hojo could address Sengum, before Arik could send his whip sword whistling forward, even before the Mask of the Fallen connected a red bead to the best place to attack Sengum Minamoto, Tayaura’s head hit the ground.

Only it wasn’t Tayaura’s head.

It was Hojo’s.

Arik’s heart quivered, the disciple fighting confusion in that moment as if his eyes had betrayed him. Mere seconds ago, Sengum Minamoto had stabbed Tayaura through the chest. From what Arik could piece together, he had swiftly removed his sword and cut her head off, which was why he saw Tayaura’s head hit the ground.

Yet now, it was Hojo’s body that was headless, and it was Tayaura who stood directly behind Sengum Minamoto, shock tracing across her face. Even Sengum seemed surprised, the master illusionist taking a step back, trying to come to grips with what had just happened.

Sensing someone behind him, Sengum swiveled with his blade drawn, but by this point Tayaura was already slipping around the evil illusionist, her teeth gritted as she drove the crystal dagger into Sengum’s back.

Sengum tried to replicate himself, but Tayaura kept stabbing, again and again, blood spritzing the air until he ultimately fell. She scrambled on top of the master illusionist, both hands on the crystal kunai as she repeatedly drove it into his back in a frenzy of anger.

“I can’t… Hojo…” Arik dropped before Hojo, who still wore his wooden bird mask and his conical hat. His eyes jumped to the neck wound, a clean cut, one through bone and flesh, and back to Hojo’s severed head. “I can’t…”

“Disciple!” cried Meosa, the kami continuing to protect them with a thick wall of sloshing water.

The sounds and the calamity around Arik all but disappeared as he looked into the Hidden Warrior’s eyes, Hojo’s pupils still twitching. He glanced over to Tayaura, one hand holding the crystal kunai, her other hand pressed against her stomach.

She finally shifted her gaze up toward Arik.

Hojo switched… he switched bodies…

Tayaura gingerly got to her feet, but not before removing Sengum’s black conical hat from his head.

Arik returned his gaze to Hojo, the disciple bewildered yet again. What he had just seen shouldn’t have been possible. Part of him still didn’t believe it. Tayaura had been the one on the ground, stabbed through the chest. She should have been decapitated. But in the end, the gruesome fate had struck Hojo instead.

It had all happened so fast.

Tayaura stumbled over to Arik and placed a shaky, bloody hand on his shoulder, the female illusionist sucking in painful breaths. “Take… take his hat.”

“Hojo’s hat?” Arik asked, noticing that Tayaura now carried Sengum’s black conical hat.

“He…” A falling tear did little to cut through the hardened look on her face. “He wanted you to have it, disciple. And his sword.”

“His… his sword?” Arik shook his head, confused.

“Would you two hurry up! I can only hold them back so much longer!” Meosa shouted, who still was maintaining a wall of water to protect them.

Tayaura slowly placed Sengum’s black hat on her head. “You get his… You get my father’s hat and sword, I get the crystal kunai and Hirokuni’s hat. That was… that was his request.”

“Hirokuni?”

“My father’s teacher. Get… get to your feet, disciple,” Tayaura said, a firmness coming to her voice. “We need to take his body with us. We can’t leave him here.” She staggered forward, her face going pale.

Arik noticed the swell of blood at the front of her robes, wet and sticky. Tayaura was still injured, which told him that Hojo had somehow switched places with his daughter just as Sengum Minamoto drew his blade from her abdomen, mere seconds before he had attempted to decapitate Tayaura.

Was it Chimaura? Had it been Thunderaura? Or was it something else entirely?

For the time being, it didn’t matter.

“Right…” Arik looked from Hojo’s headless body back to his daughter. “Let me… let me heal you first.”

****

A wall of water shot before Arik and Tayaura, tossing a few of the Crimsonian blades out of their direct path. Arik now wore Hojo’s conical hat with the slit in the front, partially shielding his eyes. He sent the Whispering Sword to the side, the blade splintering past a group of false shinobi who were trying to rally together.

“Almost there!” Meosa hovered behind the two, a pillar of water carrying Hojo’s body and his severed head. “Keep pushing forward!”

Sheathed at Arik’s waist was Hojo’s blackened blade, the disciple not yet ready to wield two weapons, the Whispering Sword when paired with the Mask of the Fallen strong enough to ward off anyone that came their way.

Even if he was able to handle the majority of their assailants, Tayaura made it a point to engage whoever the Whispering Sword spared in its hurricane of strikes, her movements fast and precise, not unlike the way Arik had seen Hojo fight. Thinking of the master illusionist brought a lump to his throat, but the disciple knew he needed to press on and reach Basha, Istvan, and Nyoko.

It was what he wanted, the disciple had to remind himself.

Arik swallowed the urge to turn back to the smoke and fire in an attempt to find Nobunaga. Not only that, there was Tatum, Sonjin, and the female blade, all three of whom seemed to have disappeared. Arik kept anticipating that they would join the fight in some way, but they hadn’t, which led him to believe that they had escaped with Nobunaga to serve as his protection.

He’d seen horses earlier. But there were ways to travel quickly, and if Arik and Tayaura moved fast enough, perhaps they could catch up with the warlord himself.

We need to make it out of here first, Arik thought as a Crimsonian blade shot toward him, the man much faster than those the Whispering Sword had already cut down. He was older too, Arik recognizing this immediately in his form and his overall body language.

Arik’s blade zipped forward and the Crimsonian blocked each of his rapid-fire strikes with one large blade. His frenzied movement caused Arik to take a step back, the Whispering Sword retreating and reforming into a solid piece.

“Let’s do this together, my boy!”

Inspired by Meosa, Arik went for his opponent again, the disciple focusing on mirroring the man’s cadence and breaking it. Their swords collided; Arik was forced to take a few steps back. He looked up, and as he did the Mask of the Fallen revealed the best place to strike, the red beam connected to the side of the man’s thigh.

The disciple was just about to send the Whispering Sword forward when the Crimsonian man gasped. The tip of a sword bloomed from the front of his robes, courtesy of Tayaura, who stood behind him, a dark look on her face.

Arik caught up with the female illusionist and the two continued on, Meosa floating Hojo’s body behind them.

They reached the front of the first camp to find even more fighting, the merchants and other civilians adding to the chaos. It appeared as if many had seized on the opportunity, some robbing and fighting, others seemingly trying to get revenge on a Crimsonian blade who may have been harsh to them.

A flash of fire drew Arik’s eyes, especially with the unnatural way that it arced up and came swinging back down. Arik spotted Istvan, the northern man with his shirt off fighting several Crimsonians at once, a couple of charred bodies near him.

Fighting beside him was Nyoko, fast with her axe, the Jadean woman’s face partially hidden by the mountain lion cap. Basha swung his femur club behind the two, able to take out several false shinobi at once. Even the bravest Crimsonians seemed to have a hard time summoning the courage to fight Basha, at least until a man who carried himself like a commander pointed his two swords at the gashadokuro and charged.

He was soon sent flying directly into the pillower’s tent, which just so happened to be on fire.

“You’re here!” Istvan said, his eyes leaping from Arik and Tayaura to Hojo. Even though he barely knew the master illusionist, a mixture of sadness and shock traced across his face. He grunted, and smacked an incoming false shinobi with his hammer. The man’s body ignited; Istvan kicked him away.

“We need to keep moving,” Tayaura said, her voice a bit haggard, face now partially obscured by Hirokuni’s black conical hat as she spoke to Istvan and Nyoko for the first time.

“Are all three camps on fire?”

“As far as we know, yes,” Arik told Istvan. “It worked. The flaming sparrows worked.”

Istvan glanced back to the smoke and fire behind them. “I can see that. Nyoko, it’s time to go. Basha! Wrap it up!”

The gashadokuro was too busy swinging his giant club to hear Istvan.

“I’ll tell him,” said Meosa. “Just focus on getting to safety, all of you.”

“This way!” Istvan ran toward the woods, and as he did he began winding up his hammer. He stopped, and sent a pillar of flames forward, igniting anything it came into contact with. “Come on,” he said, motioning toward Arik, Tayaura, and Nyoko. “The path won’t be clear for long.”

Arik could feel the heat as he ran alongside Istvan, Tayaura behind him, Nyoko at the back. He slowed to let the others pass, just in case someone needed healing. The four reached the start of the bramble, and as a group they pushed further into the forest, away from the calamity, the flames and explosions.

They reached a small clearing, Istvan catching his breath as he asked. “Where to now?”

The disciple glanced from Tayaura to Meosa, who still carried Hojo’s head and body. “Is Basha coming?”

“He said he’ll make his own way back. I think it’s best, my boy. It will be much easier to disappear without a towering bag of bones following after us. Do not worry about him. He can handle himself, I’m sure.”

“Where to now?” Istvan asked again, the northern man still charged with adrenaline even though the flames on his hammer had petered out.

“Nobunaga escaped, but the leader of the false shinobi is dead,” Tayaura said.

“Nobunaga escaped?” Istvan squinted toward the south. “Then that would mean that he headed to the border, or maybe to Iga to regroup and then head to Omoto. Is that where we will go? If we act fast…”

“No,” Arik said with finality. “Not yet, anyway. We need to deal with his body.”

“The master illusionist?” Istvan nodded quickly. “What about Iga? They have a warrior cemetery there.”

Arik shook his head. “Hojo wasn’t a warrior, and he deserves better. He deserves… he deserves to be buried in Moonagwa, before the Mourning Courtyard.”

“Moonagwa?” Tayaura asked.

Arik slowly nodded. “There is a crypt there that is empty.”

“Do you have the rights to the crypt?” Nyoko asked.

Meosa laughed. “Rights?”

“The crypt has been abandoned. It is where I got the Whispering Sword. And it is where Hojo will be buried. He will be remembered for what he did, he must be. If it wasn’t for him, Nobunaga would have made it to the north. The war would have started, and there would have been little we could have done about it. Nobunaga was planning to leave tomorrow,” Arik told Istvan and Nyoko. “Hojo’s strategy prevented a war.”

“Judging by the fire and explosions, your father should be remembered as a hero,” Istvan told Tayaura.

Tayaura merely nodded. “Moonagwa, then the Crimson Realm to finish what we started and rescue your sister.”

“There are itako in Moonagwa who may be able to speak to your father,” said Nyoko.

“Itako? You believe in those superstitions?” Istvan asked.

“I do,” Arik told him. “Itako have pointed me in the right direction twice now. I wouldn’t have the Mask of the Fallen or the Whispering Sword without them. So we can meet with an itako, if you would like to do that, Tayaura.”

“Yes. I believe he may have left a double somewhere. I would like to find it.”

“A double?” Istvan asked Tayaura. When she didn’t respond, he glanced from Nyoko to the disciple and shrugged. “I guess I’ll figure that part out later.”

“Let’s just get to the campsite and go from there.” Arik could smell smoke in the air, but he could no longer see the fire, nor could he hear the turmoil they had left in their wake.

A wave of determination washed over him as they started deeper into the woods.

Arik would rescue his sister. He would kill Nobunaga, and he would stop any more Crimsonian advances. In doing so, he would honor Hojo’s legacy, and whether he liked it or not, Arik would become the War Priest.

He was already halfway there.

The end.

War Priest 3: A Summer’s Snow is out now!

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.Back of the Book.

Reader,

It was such a pleasure to share this story with you, one that took a year of research to put together.

Here’s the link to review the War Priest 2: The Whispering Sword.

Thanks again for the support, truly. I’m a full-time independent author due to your reads, ratings, and reviews.

Real history reimagined

I’ve copied my back of the book section from the previous War Priest book below, which details some of the inner workings. One thing I will add, a part I’m particularly proud of, is the usage of birds to start a fire.

No way that is actually possible… or…

Yes, it is possible and has been done twice to my knowledge. However, it wasn’t a Shinobi tactic; it was a Viking (or better, Rus) and later Norman tactic originated by Olga of Kiev in the 900s. While I continue to try to only use shinobi/samurai concepts for War Priest, this one was just too god to pass up!

War Priest isn’t the only book I use yokai in. My other series, Pilgrim, also has yokai, and as well as elements of Japanese Mythology. Check out a link in the next section.

Everything in War Priest regarding the shinobi and the various sword techniques, including their names, has been taken from 16th and 17th century translated Japanese combat/shinobi treaties, some of which have only been translated in the last twenty years.

While I have added a fantasy element to War Priest, all of the shinobi techniques and tools were ones taught and used by real ninjas. The cultivation system is one of my own devising, but the techniques are real, only enhanced here in the text.

Further, what we call a “ninja” isn’t the actual word associated with the people who hailed from the region around Iga (a city that I visited in 2014 – I lived in Japan for nearly a year). The word shinobi, used in this text and perhaps one you are less familiar with, is a shortened version of shinobi no mono, which means ‘one who infiltrates,’ or as we call them in English, ninja.

Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing my work.

Yours in sanity,

Harmon Cooper

Writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

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