The Shadow of Issu

The Providence

Uehara Kato, those were one of the many names written upon the walls of slave traders in the Ikura

Islands. A girl—emaciated, pale, sickly, and covered in festering pus-filled wounds— trembling at the corner of a four-walled stone prison hums to herself a tune that reminded her of home. All hope had already seemed to have left from her eyes, as desperate thoughts reached to every corner of her mind—despair, grief, pain, and death.

The shackles stung cold on the skin of her ankles and a few of her fingers have been broken. She had

no idea where she was, or how she had come to be here. All she ever remembers was that she was taken from her home, placed inside a large crate for days to travel in the sea.

Day after day of crawling in her own filth and sustaining herself through what little food her

captors allowed her, she finally arrived to a seaport. There she was washed and taken to markets that hustled only during the late of night, where she was chained alongside many of Issian girls that were very far away from home.

It had been two weeks since her daily routine of being beaten, forced to work, then sent out at night to

be auctioned as a slave. She started developing blisters, and those blisters did not wait long to become infected. Realizing this, her master stopped her from going back to the auctioneers, and she was left to rot in her own prison, even forgotten to be fed from time to time.

And there she was, sobbing at the far corner of the cell, shivering and lamenting the misfortune that befell upon her. She yearned for peace, and she yearned to see her family once more, and one night, when the wailing of several others filled the crashing waves of this northern seaport, so did the voices of escape scream loud inside her head.

But she could not do anything. Her body was withered beyond what capability she hoped to achieved, malnourished due to the lack of sustenance that her master provides her. She could barely lift an eyelid, how much to free from these steel bindings.

Kuro is not a slave, she is the daughter of a renowned swordsman and teacher from Obe, a region east of Ogana separated and bordered by clusters of mountains. She was only left to reminisce the days that she trained with her father side by side the art of utilizing the environment to tailor one’s method of fighting—or as her father called it, Haikigiri. Though these recollections were done only through vague and desperate attempts, for the extent of her consciousness could only be aroused by the constant dripping of rain from the boards above her, as it was her only source of water to diminish the thirst, since the bowl that was given to her had been pissed out of spite from her master when he knew that she could no longer be auctioned.

Every unfortunate event that had led her to this cold, damp, and despairing place began when the capital accused her father of assisting the Ukumari, claiming that some of the Tenshando had fought many which adapted the similar technique that her father teaches, the Haikigiri.

Of course, Kuro knew this was untrue. It was probably an attempt to overthrow his mastership over a pioneering school in Obe against an outdated Ogana swordsman. But one night, Uehara Ide was set-up. The ministry stormed their home and demanded Uehara to surrender. Furious, Ide killed a Tenshando and used this man’s blade to kill each one that came at him as he attempted to fight back the ministry.

Ide was eventually overwhelmed. For his resistance and insubordination, he was forced to watch his family die before his very eyes. And from below the floorboards, Kuro holds her mouth with both her hands, crying as she witnesses whom she used to believe are men with honor s*******r everyone— her mother, her two sisters, and her brother.

Finally, it was Ide’s turn to meet them, and without a single breath of hesitation, spears were driven through his heart, all because of fear—fear that stemmed from an accusation that her father had dealings with the enemy.

Kuro was covering her mouth in the duration of this harrowing sight, holding her breath as to not let out a single sound as the ministry set the entire house into flames. She made her way out of the crawl-space below her house and set out into the forest located behind the house and ran for as far as her little legs will take her.

When morning finally came, she wakes up to the smell of smoke and ash mixing into the rain. It had come soon after she woke up, crashing over her with a constant pattering with only the dense canopy above her to shelter her from the rain. She slowly traced her way back, following that choking smell of burned wood and death.

Upon reaching her house, she saw the desolation of it all. In the middle of what remained of her home, the burnt carcass of her father leaned over a spear that was lodged deep into his chest as it protruded from the ground. A few meters from him, she turns to see her two sisters, blackened and laying still on the cold ground, her mother was beside them, cradling a baby wrapped in a soot-covered blanket.

She could not move a muscle and not a sound came out of her mouth. Kuro stood there, whether in awe, shock, or in horror, she could not explain. All she had ever remembered of that day was that she felt no cold from the rain, yet strangely, she could still feel the searing heat of the fire last night dancing across her face, the fire that engulfed this abode that had now been reduced to a decrepit skeleton of its former greatness.

She nears to her father, staring into his lifeless face. During his final moments, his appearance seemed calm. Then she knew that was only a lie. Within that still and accepting countenance, she knew her father had harbored regrets that she might never ever hear him speak. Kuro began to cry as soon as she realized and remembered what her father kept telling her.

Live to serve, but let not your life be defined by regret.

Something inside her snapped, she throws her arms over him as her tears flow down with the rain across her face. She soon fell asleep under that haunting arced figure, and when she came to, she was surrounded by raiders. The smoke from last night must have drawn them in.

Then everything fell right into place. She was stranded in that island for two years, those plans of escape that bore in her mind were but fleeting fantasies, as she soon accepted the verity of her miserable life in one of the islands here in the Ikura archipelagos.

They call the place here Dorei-Ana, or Slaver’s Hollow. Kuro eventually found herself surviving under thievery. The versatility of movement offered by the teachings of the Haikigiri innately allowed Kuro from being caught by the most ruthless and murderous men in the Slaver’s Hollow.

After observing Kuro’s potential for a few runs, her master started treating her well after he found a way to profit from her larcenous skills.

But something deep inside her remains a sense of regret—to use the skill that she had learned from the respected technique raised by her later father for something as trivial and depraved such as this, Kuro slowly realized that she would eventually have to stop.

One night, when several marauder ships docked to bring in new batches of slaves procured from the southern parts of Issu, Kuro’s attention was caught by a strange and ornamented Kuratashi in one of the ship’s decks. As she maneuvers her way into the boat unnoticed, she found herself staring into a strangely decorated place where placed atop a well-kept crimson cloth, the Kuratashi was found, scented with what seemed like agar wood. She hovers her hand above it, and she feels a cold and icy aura emanate from it.

Upon witnessing the sheathed sword before her, waiting for the taking, Kuro’s mind sinks into the raging thoughts of revenge. The urge to to pick it up was too strong to dissuade, even if a part of her surmises that this was all but a trap.

As she attempts to hold the Kuratashi’s hilt, the sword instantly vanished. She withdraws her hand in fright. Kuro locks her sights around the edges of the walls, watching, scrutinizing if this was any form of a trap. But there was nothing, nothing but the undisturbed silence that was constantly broken by the shuddering as waves crashed upon the hull of the ship.

Glancing back to that once empty space, Kuro saw again the blade materialize from thin air. On her second attempt, she was halted by a voice behind her.

“Go ahead, take it.”

Kuro turned back, instantly unsheathing a makeshift dagger that she had used only but a few times as a way to defend herself in times that she feels that the situation was inescapable. She could always make a new one. Thoughts of an escape ran through Kuro’s mind, but she was probing there, locking eyes with the man with her shiv steady in her fingers, ready to be used come any circumstance whether as a distraction, or as a tool to kill.

Her periphery caught sight of an open window, but just as if the man had read her thoughts, he waved his hand towards the side of the room, quickly to catch her gaze, and all the windows, including the one that Kuro was aiming for, closed shut.

Kuro backs away in shock, touching the edge of the wooden table where the Kuratashi was placed. She looks back to reach it, but this time, she was hesitant.

The man ambled slowly over both the entrance and the exit of the deck. His impression appeared to pose no threat— at least not yet. He simply wandered around that portion across the room, appreciating the ornaments that had festooned the inside of the deck so fanatically.

His robes were adorned with strange markings, though from its impeccable design, it was completely Issian in origin. It peculiarly matched the palette of the room, with all its golden etchings, maroon and lavender pigments, the suspended chains of decorative purpose, lanterns and lamp shades, paper balloons, and a deity in the middle of a small shrine just beyond the Kuratashi. There was also a scented burner beside the painted shrine where that golden figure was placed.

“Who are you?” Kuro asks in hostility.

The man walks over to a ceramic vase instead of giving her an answer. The surface was painted with scenes of winter and snow, trees bare but the pines stood high and intimidating. What churned her stomach as she gazes upon that ornament, while the man graces his fingers across the smoothened surface, was that beyond the picturesque detail of the vase, there were depictions of mutilations, impalements, and beheadings as blood scattered like crimson blooms across the white glossy canvas.

In the midst of that gruesome art— a man, almost demonic in aspect, clad in a complete set of armor. He was swinging a large sword, fairly larger than a Kuratashi, that which is called a Dakana— a weapon found only in a battlefield, where the dead pile like mountains and the crows gather like dark clouds above them to block the sun.

Her father spoke of war fearfully, and he would only mention them during the more serious moments of teaching.

Her father, the words rung inside her mind.

“Is there something that you’re thinking of?” The voice called out.

Kuro looks straight into the stranger’s eyes with her hostile demeanor showing just as evident as it was before.

She did not have to answer the man , nor to any man, for what they did to her—all the unspeakable acts that had almost shattered her spirit, despite all the broken bones and the torn muscles— or to any girl who was taken from their homes and sold to cater the twisted desires of these men, who came to participate in these abhorrent businesses wearing masks to hide their identities, emerging only during the night like demons afraid of the sun, afraid that their atrocities will come into light, and reveal their pure and sickening state.

She wanted to serve that purpose. She wanted to live dedicating to hunting down her abusers, enact retribution of Uehara Ide’s accusers, and reveal the true repulsive face of what these men had attempted so desperately to hide.

“Do you truly wish to live a life filled with such hate?” The man asked her from across the room. He was leaning over the vase, staring straight into her eyes with a strange, unexplainable, familiarity.

“The man on this ceramic ornament, is the infamous Fushikami Sukuno, a warlord in the dawning age of the great capital, who was known for his brutality and his lack of remorse.

Fushikami Sukuno once ruled one-fourth of Issu, spreading his armies far and wide, subjugating whoever was unfortunate enough to be caught sight of his army that shared the same degenerate and wicked minds.

He had come by many names throughout the history of Issu— The Demon of Obe, Sukuno the Ravenous, he who revels in blood, and others too many and atrocious to mention, changing, almost to the point that many of the olden lords came together in cordial decision to bury this dark secret from its successors. But Sukuno’s unrelenting determination churned even beyond the grave.

The evils committed by Sukuno was beyond any man could hope to imagine, almost coming to par with Ictha himself. It was not for long that many became intrigued with the feats of the Ravenous himself. Artisans of a far later age began to take interest of this monster’s historical identity that they began to create pieces of art that mimicked the man’s insatiable desire for c*****e.

And so we return here. This vase is at least two-hundred years old, and still it mirrors the same events that transpire in our lands today.”

Kuro paused to listen more, the tone in the man’s voice was almost, if not, strangely akin to his father’s soft but firm tone. But her guard had not faltered, with feet planted on the floor and the dagger held straight before her, pointing at the man, readied to strike anytime if he attempts to do anything rash and foolish.

“War never changes, my dear visitor, but the people, the tools behind it do. What once was a man before, can now be hundreds.”

 The expression in Kuro’s face turned to confusion. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you are afraid.”

“Afraid” She scoffs. “Of what?”

“Of death.” He coaxed.

“With that you are mistaken.”

“Dying with nothing but regret and shame to bring beyond.”

A shadow began to cast above Kuro’s eyes. “You know nothing of me, even the crowmen would have to pry the truth from my dead body, and even then, it will only be for nothing.”

“A certain person once told you to live without regret, and this is exactly what you are afraid of, is it not?” The man paced forward, the mien that he wore had become bitingly cold, fervent and uncluttering.

 “Afraid that you would not meet up to your father’s expectation, afraid of thoughtless inaction, afraid that when you finally see him from beyond the path, you will only be greeted by the shame of your cowardly excuse of a life.”

“No, I am not!” With a fit of rage, she grabs the red cloth behind her. The Kuratashi fell on the floor and her voice spilled all across the ship. Kuro heard steps above her and the muttering of voices, the noise grew louder just outside that room.

“Take the sword.” The man tells her. “Take the blade, and serve for it.”

The door instantly pries open, and inside flooded in mercenaries, pirates, and slavers alike. A man, adorned in slightly distinguished colors, possibly the owner of the ship, moves across the gathering crowd to find out what the commotion was all about.

“Let me through!” The man shoves away his men to make way. As his ring-ornamented fingers set aside the last pair of shoulder, he opens the scene to a slave-girl attempting to hold the Kuratashi on the floor.

Pitiful, he thinks, with a derisive stare. “Kill her, and do your way with her.” He told the men who began to chuckle maniacal noises, puckering their lips in ridicule. Another one of those thieves who thinks they could steal the Senburo.

Kuro gently places her hand below the hanging cord and suspends it before her. She places her left hand over the scabbard, bending her fingers over the varnished wood as she feels the weight of the sword. Kuro proceeds to hover her hand before the hilt as those around her waited in anticipation for her to fail.

Her fingers coiled around the handle perfectly.

The words that were thrown in the ship were a combination of stop her and run. But some, who were the most non-superstitious, believed that what Kuro had drawn was simple an ordinary blade.

They were wrong.

Kuro closed her eyes, and just briefly, she unsheathed the sword and stabbed it into the gut of the first attacker. From her most familiar technique, she left the sword impaled in that man’s abdomen, freeing her hands to try and disarm the next one and kill him with his weapon.

Even despite the putrid and nauseating smell that fills the sea-muddled air, she takes in a fresh familiar breath. All her joints, her muscle’s movements, her posture— she feels the life course through her veins as she once again takes on the style that Ide had taught her, the Haikigiri— outsmarting and using her opponent’s momentum to disarm them and ending them in just a second’s notice.

Readying her hands, she expects to disarm the next one. She executes it flawlessly, slicing through the man’s neck like paper, but as it caught her by surprise, the Kuratashi materialized on her dominant hand and she was equipped with swords on each hand. All those that witnessed her brandish that sword with finesse watched in awe, while others who realized their fate when they would linger frantically turned back, tripping over as they clawed their way back to the island. These were the ones who have heard the legend behind the Senburo.

“What the hell is this?” She utters under her breath, staring at the surreal blade.

The slaver backs away and grabs the nearest collar. “What in Issu’s name are you waiting for? An invitation? Get her!” The man screamed.

Kuro was beginning to be surrounded, she executed a double-wielded stance, defending both her front and flanks. One charged first and Kuro threw the Senburo, impaling the man where he stood, staring appalled to the sword lodged into his own torso. She runs towards him, using the hilt as a stepping ledge, splitting the man’s lower torso into two, then leaping into the air and descending to her next target like an owl upon prey.

She rends the man’s throat, splitting it open. She confidently reaches her hand to the air, and as she expected, the sword took shape in her fingers, glowing an ethereal lavender hue.

It did not take long for her to paint the walls of the ship red.

“W-What is your name?” The man tried to instigate a conversation. His legs were trembling, his fingers quaking in fear. “What do you want? Money? Power?”

“Vengeance.” She whispered as she raised her sword pointing it towards him. Every unmanned blade littered across the floors of ship, lain beside its dead owners, rose to the air and darted towards the man. The force lifted him from his knees as he breathed out his last breath impaled and suspended on his ship’s mast.

Kuro falls to her knees, panting. She looks back and sees that the man in the room had disappeared. She returns her gaze to the docks where every degenerate from Slaver’s Hollow waited with all sorts of weapons—Kuratashi, lances, spears, chained hooks, and other grotesquely shaped tools.

They called her from the docks, telling her to surrender before the burn the ship down.

She stood up from where she looks down upon the scums of the earth. “Father, if I die, it will be without regret.” She whispers. With those words, the sky began to darken as the clouds gathered into a baleful spiral above them. Then the gleam of a massive object came as each Ikuran witnesses in pure awe the spectacle that emerged from the clouds—a sword, the size of a mountain, had just fallen from the sky.

It was far too late for most to realize that they were just beneath the shadow of this monumental blade.

As they scattered like ants, the blade fell on them without ceasing, shattering and flaying those caught in its wake, reducing their bodies into strips of flesh and viscera, blood spraying across the ground, spilling into the waters until the sea had turned red.

Pieces of the great blade simply turned into smoke afterwards, instantly beclouding Dorei-Ana in a mist.

Amidst the fire and the chaos that engulfed Slaver’s Hollow, Kuro returns to her master who was crawling away from her in desperate attempt. She looks into his eyes and recognizes the fear and desperation inside them.

“You do not hesitate to bring misery upon others, yet when faced by death, you cower.” She asks. The man was taken by crippling terror to utter even a word.

“Die.”

On that night, one of the Ikura islands was returned to the sea. Only a ship with a handful of slaves survived the great m******e as it was last seen disappearing to the southern routes.