The Shadow of Issu

One Thousand Swords and Broken Vessels

The Yasu are born from negative emotions— fear, grief, envy, anger, and despair. But in certain occasions, many special Yasus are born from impurities, impurities left behind by bodies desecrated and left without a proper burial, and so the land of Yura is haunted by these anomalies, more so than the natural saturation of these wayward spirits in a particular region in Issu.

What came to be known as the culling transpired in these planes throughout the concluding events of the Seven Year War, when the Ukumari could no longer turn back to the land-bridge subsequently after the capital took Katen Valley. They retreated here to the south in the last year of the war and as they were reduced to less than a tenth of their army by the capital’s unstoppable unit of Bladesworns, the Ukumari were ruthlessly hunted down to the last breathing one, regardless whether they were woman or child.

Ancient blood of the Ukumari are spilled in the regions of Yura.It was told that the blood of the Ukumari tampers with great dealings of mystic arts, and so these weaknesses are shared by the Yasu that dwell here.

Having known of that, Akane pours sugar from a wooden container, offering it to the snow that covers the ground outside the cave. She lights up a piece of agar wood that emanated a sweetly entrancing scent. After speaking something to the wind, in a language that Akha had not heard before, she cups the snow with her hands where the sugar was spread over and pours them into the container before wrapping it in paper and sealing it with a ribbon.

“Here,” She gave it to Akha.

“What is this?”

“Divine Sugar.” Akane answered. “When drawing your sword, sprinkle a bit of it on the surface. It will allow your blade to tether to other realms where your Kuratashi cannot reach.”

“You speak as if…”

“Yes, we are sure to run across a yasu, and not simply an ordinary one.”

Akha looked down on the box and fitted it at a makeshift satchel that he tied behind his back. “Would this also work against the Yasukagi?”

“No, a yasu carries its abilities, both its weaknesses and immunities, from where it originates from. You will also have to consider the level of the yasu. If it were merely one that arises from an heirloom or a dead person, then even a novice swordsman could defeat it in mere seconds, but if it was an ancient demon that once haunted a valley for hundreds of years and derives its power from the land itself—then it would need to take on special interventions.”

Akha nodded in discernment. The dawn was late but the sky was still draped in muddy darkness, for the storm of last night had not completely subsided. The two could no longer spare another second to waste in the cave and so they had to continue. Akane’s quick ceremonial rite was their last preparation before they departed deeper into the Tundra.

The treeless hills soon turned into dense coniferous forests. Darkness crept every corner and forced the two to light a torch. They trotted the horses slowly onto the beaten path as Akha’s eyes observed any trace that came from the ominous echoes that lurked around them. The Kinu’s eyes could see fairly into the darkness, and so far there were no movements that would invite trouble in these claustrophobic and isolated woodlands.

“The air feels… heavy.” Akane spoke under arduous breaths.

Akha’s eyes scanned through the trees and there he saw one.

Atop the trees, a gaunt and hunched creature clamped onto the trunk of a pine. It was humanoid in figure, biped and misshapen. Its arms were adorned with rings, braces, and tattered rags, with bones pressed hard against taut pale skin. Its visage was a terrifying one— demonic and grotesque in design, with a protruded jaw, eyes sunken deep into its horned skull, a lengthened nose, horns projected from its temples. Its maw was lined with sharp teeth with incisors exposed from its mouth as white icy mist spilled from its vestibule. Its eyes glowed menacing red like blazing embers in the darkness.

The swordsman reached to his back and took out a handful of the Divine Sugar. He spread it across the air and swung his sword to catch it. The Kanakahaburo glowed with a blue nebulous flame.

The Yasu kept exhaling that cold breath as it encompassed the entire forest in an icy fog. The air suddenly grew colder, and Akha began to notice a tightness in his chest as it became harder to breathe with each passing second.

The swordsman leapt from his horse and landed on the ground. He looks up to find any trace of the Yasu and catches it moving across the canopies. He approaches to one of the conifers and bounds from tree to tree, ascending himself to the top.

Soaring from the crown of these needle giants, he winded the Kuratashi mid-air where the Yasu glances back to him in surprise. It was already too late for the demon, the sword was already swung and the cold steel had passed through the creature’s neck like a gust of wind, severing the head from the body. As Akha descends back to the ground, the body of the Yasu falls behind him, yet still the air had not lightened.

Ice began to form on the reins of Akane’s steed, crawling from the stone and the trees. Something else was causing the mist.

“Akha, the ground…”

Akha met Akane’s eyes with the same realization. There was a sudden shuddering of the ground and from the darkness that filled the forest, there emerged a horde of Yasu as if awoken from the recent geologic disturbance. They began to gather around the trees like locusts would swarm upon crops, blocking out what little light that tried to make its way to the ground.

Without a single breath of hesitance, Akha tore through the horde and slew as many as how far his Kuratashi reached. It was not for long that the ground was saturated with Yasu blood. Akane tries to calm the startled horses.

“Wait, stop!”

The swordsman’s fury did not end there. Akane called to him one more, but it was as if his ears were deafened. With each passing second, his Kuratashi rends another Yasu, gliding across the sky like a bird of death as blood poured down like rain.

Inexplicably, the cold air had not subsided, and to have made matters worse, it seemed to have grown brutally stronger. The shuddering had not also stopped, and it was until Akane realized that the very ground they stood upon had been elevated. A draft of freezing air came above pushing down against them as her lungs were slowly being turned into ice.

“Where are we?” Akane whispered between shivering breaths. She opened her eyes to a sea of clouds, the moon hanging above them illuminating that parcel of land as if in the day. Many mountains of deep Yura peaked above the clouds. From a far distance, she catches the glimpse of a temple. Akane looks over the edge and she begins to witness what seemed like extremeties appearring from one side.

“Akha!” Akane calls above. “We are above a Yasu.” She whispered.

But the swordsman was hopelessly immersed in the art of killing. Bathed in ghoulish blue light, he stands above a field of corpses. He was misplaced, submerged into a different twisted world where Akane seemed so far away now. He grasps the hilt of the sword and turns towards his only companion with a murderous look.

“Akha?”

He dashed and tore through a transparent tendril that materialized behind Akane. She gasped in surprise and saw that a hundred more surfaced from the ground.

“Akane… run…” Akha whispered.

The swordsman approaches her, only to be stopped by two Kurutashis that crossed before him. The two looked up, and they saw figures leap from the sky. Following this, it rained swords all across the ground, piercing with a faint glow that took on the likeness of Akha’s Kurutashi when he scattered the Divine Sugar over his sword.

A screech resounded across the ground, a tone akin to a cry of agony tore through the trees. They ascended from the clouds, almost as if they walked across the air itself. There were probably dozens of them, pulling out swords out of wind and striking the colossal Yasu. One of them descended to the ground. She placed her left hand into the air extending her palm outward. The Kurutashi before Akha loosened from the ground and flew to her. She lowered one knee, taking a stance with two blades pointed towards the swordsman.

“It chose him.” The figure spoke. “We have to kill him.”

“No!” Akane screamed, but the dual-wielding swordsman had already rushed to meet Akha’s blade. Her footwork was extremely light, for the moment she knew that Akha blocked her attack, she receded by vaulting backwards to reposition herself. 

“He is the next vessel. There is no saving him.” 

One of the colossus’s appendages came down at them where the two clashed blades. The stranger pushed her Kuratashi forward to drive Akha's sword back and evaded the massive attack. From the smoke and the debris that went aloft from the impact, Akha emerges and drives the blade through the surface of the tendril. The blue flame began to dissipate from the blade, and the Kurutashi pierced through empty air.

Akha reaches back again and swipes Divine sugar over the surface of his sword, and it blazed again in that faint blue fire. He jumps from the creature and performs a downward strike, severing the thing into two as it hissed into smoke.

The stranger stands straight up, her expression astonished.

“Impossible.” She uttered.

“Whatever of this vessel you spoke of—Akha is not simply one that this land can take from me.”

The stranger’s stern countenance turned into realization, she cast her gaze to the sky and signaled those who followed her to stand down, directing all attacks to divert the Yasu’s attention.

She whispered a mantra, and a gleam from the sky above them caught her eye. From the heavens materialized a great sword that contested even the size of the colossus. It mirrored the color of the sky, a sheen that manifested the blade’s edge, splitting the clouds that posed no hinder to its imminent falling. This enormous sword impaled down on the Yasu, piercing the ground until the edge protruded to the other side of its bulked mountainous shape.

The Yasu eventually descended back to the large crater that it had surfaced from and the sword that had killed it dissipated into hissing smoke.

When the colossal Yasu fell, so did Akha. His arms were caught by two blademasters who was srangely expecting him to fall to his knees.

This unexpected unit of blademasters was revealed one by one. Akane soon realized that all of them were female. All of their faces were concealed with white expressionless masks, and behind it their eyes were covered in a black cloth, except for one of them, who tried to kill Akha, and whom Akane had also conversed with.

The woman stepped forward and stood straight up in an arced posture before them. Her hair, as black as night, was tied back behind her by a red cloth, set to flow freely in the cold drafts of Yura winds. Her apparel was without doubt, one that belonged to a high priestess's, but her unorthodox methods and questionable actions hints Akane that she was more than just a ceremonial figure, but what gave it away was that she was holding a Kuratashi, which was forbidden by shrine priestesses. The glare in her eyes was filled with an intense look, one deeply haunted by a past that spoke through the sadness inside them, and a concealed torment barely visible except for Akane. Lined just below her eyelids were pigments of red paint. While had done well to add a layer of menace to her aspect, it also established an aura of reverence in her demeanor. Her pupils were a deep green, the same color as the needles of the conifer trees around them.

“You must be terribly lost to wander this far into Yura, even the locals would not dare to set foot upon these grounds.”

“You are Uehara Kuro, of the Kiori Temple.”

The woman tilted her head in wonder. “Have I made your acquaintance before?”

“No, but I have heard of your rebellious feats against the capital.”

The woman smiled slyly, but it returned quickly to a calm composure. “Even during the day, it is dangerous to be here, let us take this to the temple over hot tea.”

Akane nodded and so it was decided. The other blademasters went to pick up the swords that were scattered around them. Each one had at least three empty sheathes, and five at most. They plucked the swords from the snow, wiped them over their sleeves and returned each blade into their respectful wooden scabbard. There were hundreds dispersed into the ground.

Akane saved her questions until they would reach the temple. A few hours of walking through the deeply hidden woodlands, there opened the entrance that led on above a staircase that spanned a thousand steps into the sky. The gate, that which symbolized paths into a shrine temple, was worn and dilapidated. The steps were thick with moss and slippery with ice. But they carried on.

Akane realized that those that fought the Yasu back miles ago were not official, and stately recognized, blademasters, for those who are are determined by school and style of technique. From the grace of their movements and the manner of how each one observes proper decorum makes it known that they were raised primarily as shrine maidens, Akane's observation was deduced to her comparison with the ones she commonly sees in Ogana in ceremonies. 

They moved in two columns following behind them, others ringing a bell after each fifty steps.

The path towards the temple was a lengthy one, it took them almost half an hour until they finally reached flat ground. The group also had to pass through a dense mist-veiled portion of the mountain forest where Uehara once warned her, for whatever reason, to not stare too long into the empty mist.

When Shida described the Kiori temple, it was said to be a place not so easily found. But the truth of the matter was written elsewhere in texts of old god-gates and abandoned temples of the same forgotten origin and purpose.

Atop the mountain, in a large clearing, there stood a temple with ancient design, far much older than the ones that Ogana adapts, and some of the architecture in the capital are fairly old. Though the season was winter, there was not a single fleck of snow in the temple grounds. Even the trees that would have already shed their crown in winter have blossomed flowers. The air was still cold and the constant blowing wind had proved it so, but it was far better than to be left in the snow and death that fills every corner of Yura in the seasonal winter. They passed through the gate and the shrine maidesn began to spread out to do errands that required the maintenance of the sacred temple before them.

Uehara, who Akane imagined to be the head-priestess, welcomed both Akane and her unconscious companion beyond the gate.

“Your friend cannot go inside the temple, for fear that he may desecrate it with his brief entanglement with Sukuno.”

“Sukuno?” Akane utters under her breath.

“The colossal Yasu that awoke from its slumber—only a great strain in the balance can release such a creature from its dormant state. It was when your friend killed those Uoni, or stray spirits, with something dark and ancient possessing his heart, making it hard for one to stray from the temptation of satisfaction of killing.”

“To what extent can you say that one becomes taken by Sukuno’s influence?”

“A faint blue light lingering on the skin of that person, as it turns pale until that unfortunate victim almost seems spectral, and most of all, the unstoppable urge to s*******r. That is usually the first step until Sukuno’s materialization into the world. He is one of those restless spirits of malice that had failed to cross the boundary betwixt life and death—perpetrated by the m******e that happened here decades ago, during the Ukumari Wars. Now the dead atrocious warlord Fushikami Sukuno wanders in these lands searching for his next vessel to take.

It seemed that the spirit of Sukuno found another candidate to channel the curse that the Kiori shrine maidens have been deterring since the Seven Year War,”

“This prompted you to strike Akha down atop that Yasu.”

“Exactly, the shrine maidens have been trained to distinguish Sukuno’s influence with just one glance. So far, we have not seen a vessel so fitted to channel all that hate and malice that writhes in Sukuno’s spirit.”

“Is there something you can do about this?” Akane asks calmly.

Uehara places a hand to her chin, thinking. “There were only two methods which we found most effective—we can either kill the vessel or transfer the influence to someone else. The others are just too perilous to even prove a second time.

One way or another, it all ends with killing the vessel. No one has ever survived Sukuno’s possession.”

Staring at Akha, Akane’s decisions warred inside her mind. The vision that she had seen in the cave suddenly elucidated itself before her. The death of Akha was not a swift and painful death, but the killer was but a shadow, immaterial and faceless. This sent a quick shiver up her spine, knowing that it was not the cold around them.

 Akha was set unto a rock and chained outside the temple as Akane and Uehara made their way inside.

“Has one ever conquered Sukuno’s possession?” Akane asked.

“None.” Uehara answered her in a regretful tone. “I have tried… many times, for Sukuno has found a way to possess the body of a woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sukuno is the embodiment of a lustful and ravenous monster, reveling in both the pleasures of flesh and the c*****e that comes from it. Sukuno’s evil prefers that of a man’s body to mirror his old ways of living, but recently, I had begun to lose some of my shrine-watchers to his influence.

About two months ago, when fetching water from the wells, one of them came running back to report a murdered shrine-watcher in the forest. It was not for long that we realized the killer was one of us, since no one could simple enter or leave the temple grounds. Sukuno found a way to pass through the mist and linger only so far as the outskirts of the forests around Kiori, and when one maiden was passing through to complete that night’s moon fast, Sukuno took over the poor soul.

She was eventually found outside the borders of the gate, and quickly slain by the hands of her sisters. Then, it happened. Day after day, more disappeared, and those who went to hunt them… some no longer came back. From a thousand watchers, there are only a hundred of us left.”

Uehara’s tone tried to mask the evident pain that remains in her eyes. The circles beneath them showed that she had not had sleep for days, but even that did not show any weakness when they fought against that Yasu in the forest.

“We can help you.”

“Outsiders should not take on the matters of spiritual conflicts.”

“But we are not mere outsiders,” Akane bowed down and introduced herself. “I am Tomoga Akane, diplomat and strategist of the fourth Shin of Ogana, and our reason of being comes from the capital’s aspiration to coalesce forces from beyond its land to fight for Issu, forces that have yet to chose which side.”

Uehara believed this, but still her skepticism was not one to blame her for. It has been years since someone from below set foot in these shrines, and for some untold reason, she had the urge to allow the swordsman this brief period of life, despite the grudge that she bears against Sukuno.

The high-priestess turned back, thinking, staring deep into the varnished wooden walls of the temple. She began to speak.

“Kiori is a sanctum, far beyond the dealings of this world’s strife. We know little of the world outside Yura now…. but we are not strangers to the horrors of war. Do you wonder why there are no males in this shrine temple, lady Tomoga?”

Akane watches to her sides, where some of the shrine maidens stood, waiting for some kind of command from this shrine’s guardian which was Uehara Kuro. She glances at the hands of these maidens and notices scars, callouses, and closed wounds. One of them was missing a few fingers.

“Solace.” Akane answered.

“That is right.” Uehara smiled. “Abused, sold as slaves, hunted, we are all orphans of war here.”

Akane paused for a second. Kuzaemon Shida expected an army of a thousand from the Kiori shrine, but it seemed that the dilemma that haunts those found in its ordeals have taken an desperate toll. She had to decide her next course of action, whether it be for the benefit of the capital, or for something else.

“Do you really intend to help us, Tomoga Akane?” Uehara asks in absolute sincerity.

“I do.”

The high-priestess smiled. “You may be a complete stranger to me, Tomoga Akane, and I have no knowledge as to how much you know about me, but I place the fate of the Kiori shrine watchers under your hands.

Then again, you were able to bless snow into divine sugar, so perhaps I would not regret too wholly of this unlikely succor. But know this— I do not trust a word from the capital as much as any, but if it would deliver us from the evil that is beginning to conquer us… then perhaps it is time for me to accept that we can no longer do this alone.”

“I am glandened to hear that.”

Uehara prompted Akane to stay there and make herself comfortable on a mat placed before a small oak table. She went somewhere back and Akane was enveloped in silence, save for the sound of winter birds and the constant humming of an age-old temple. The head-priestess came back with a tray that brought with it a clay kettle and two ceramic cups. She placed one before Akane and poured the aromatic golden liquid inside them.

She then sat across Akane with eyes filled with staidness.

“Now to begin, I will tell you a little of Sukuno the Ravenous and the duty of the Kiori Shrine Watchers.”