The Shadow of Issu

The Pact of Blood

The air was copious with the biting gale of a coming winter. Dawn was almost over as the sun rose from the east mountains. The two were atop the Goundo Kuzobuki, sharing familiar glances and mysterious gazes. Both of their eyes were filled with emptiness, yet inside them harbored something that shadowed a painful past, two different forms of regret that shared the same grief.

“It really has come to this.” Hina spoke to Akha with a familiar sorrow.

“Yes.” The swordsman replied.

“Very well then.” Hina untied her hanging cord and suspended the Kuratashi in front of her. She slowly drew her sword from the sheathe and discarded it beside her. The gleam of the blade was as deadly as her eyes that looked deep into Akha’s.

“I never thought this day would come.” She spoke.

“Iyone.” Akha calls. “I—”

“Save your words, Kinu.” A sadness bore on her face. “We will share them as we part soon.” The twinkling in her eyes had been the same from the first time they had met. They belonged to someone who had found a deep longing, unclouded neither by hate or malice. There was purity in that smile, as much as there was strength in her grip that lifted the sword high and swung it low in a manner of grace that was astounding to witness.

Truly inside her, there was not a single intent to kill.

“Very well.” The swordsman whispered. “It cannot be helped.”

“Yes, it goes without saying, but it cannot be helped.”

The first gust of the wind came when Hina drew her Kuratashi, its whisper heralding her first intent. Fushi Hiru, the wind stance, allowed her to strike fast enough to land a blow, but the swordsman was also fast, and the tip of her sword was deflected by Akha’s own Kuratashi, which was only halfway drawn as he held up both sword and sheathe before him.

He drew the whole blade and swung as Hina vaulted away from it and took up the stone stance.

“I have heard of your accomplishments.” Akha initiated, by which Hina only replied with a smile.

“Such things do not mean anything.” She spoke. “Such things where as death entails, and is deemed an accomplishment, is only appreciated by one that delivers death.”

“I remember a certain person say, that if you’ve not known why you bring a sword, then you have no business with one.”

Hina smiled. “The words of a hypocrite.” She whispered, then she sent her sword forward and delivered another strike. The two clashed steel for a time with Akha delivering each strike with caution. It was not for long that Hina noticed how the swordsman was holding back.

“You embarrass me, Orchid.” She spoke, and suddenly her moves became deadlier and finer. Her quick thrusts and recovered swings became harder to deflect and her footwork harder to read. Akha began to sense that she was serious, and that she truly wished to kill him.

The Discipline of the River Blade relies heavily on defensive forms, paired with cautious but swift offensive move sets. Akha remembers Akane tell him. But from the way that Hina displays her swordsmanship in their duel, it seemed that her attacks were more vicious than they were cautious, delivering attacks first with tampered strength and blinding speed and recovering posture just as quickly.

He wanted to exploit that against her by incapacitating his opponent with a strike aimed for the hand. The eyes of the Kinu are quick and precise to catch a blade thrusted towards them that they could stop it in between both palms before it reached them. He used this perceptiveness to observe any faults from one of her attacks.

Even a single space to catch one's breath can be one.

An opening, he suddenly noticed after a flurry of her deadly thrusts. Akha extends his left foot back, lowers his own body and swings his sword upward to try and land a blow to her gripping hand. But the strangest feint was displayed by Hina the moment he had tried to land an attack. She turned, dodging the blade by a hair's breadth, as the momentum of his strike was followed by a turning kick that struck his wrist, as if Hina had already anticipated him to read her. 

Akha’s Kuratashi flew from his hands.

Akane’s eyes squinted and Hase stayed focused. These moves were an adaptation to one of the water stances forms, where one quickly repositions himself to land a suppressive blow when he cannot use the blade against his opponent. This move-set required a high aptitude of skill and speed, and an improper execution of these movements can spell death to a novice in a duel.

Akha rolled on the mat to his sword as Hina brings down her blade to skewer him. He recovers his Kuratashi, but Hina had already lifted the blade and dashed to him in speeds that sundered the wind. Akha blocks the attack by deflecting the strike from his back from which Hina’s position took an advantage.

Akha turns and does a full swing down, which Hina’s footwork easily allows her to leap back and retake a proper Goundo stance.

He stands straight up, panting.

“You seem out of breath.” She smiled.

The swordsman did not answer. His eyes spoke for him, empathy and respect resided in the swordsman's still gaze as there was also the intention to kill, though from Hina’s perspective, there seemed only hesitation.

Akane, and Hase are by the entrance of the Kuzuboki’s roof-top, observing properly the fight between Goundo’s most powerful swordsman and a former Kinu. Akane was in deep scrutiny, watching every footwork from both sides with utmost precision, looking for the gap from each other’s proficiency of the blade, shown in full display by the variety of movements from each one’s techniques. 

Perhaps what she had spoken to Akha did almost no good to this duel. Hina’s blade work seemed to stem from the Technique of the River Blade, most evident by her flowing movements that had almost no allowance to dead air and openings where an opponent could have the opportunity to strike, but her technique was entirely different, something that felt like a more fatal, and astonishingly polished version of the River Blade.

“Tell me, Kinu.” Hina called out. “How does one without a master resolve one’s purpose?”

Akha lowered his gaze, and a shadow brooded over the swordsman’s eyes. He instigated an attack with a thrust, which Akha deflects the moment the strike lands. He winds back, and delivers a series of continuous swings and two-handed forward thrusts. These attacks showed no relent as Hina was tested to the utmost capability of her skills.

The duel goes on, and finally they found each other facing from a far length, their hands steady on the hilt of their swords, its blade pointing at each other.

“Is this how your father fought as well?” The swordsman asks.

Suddenly the blood in Hina’s veins ran cold.

The frivolity of her mien transformed to a menacing, grudging countenance. A sudden betiding that replaced that composed countenance. “Tread carefully, Kinu.” She warns.

“Few of many truly know the truth.” He continues.

“And I assume you are no stranger to it, Kinu? Do you speak as if you have known me, and for it not simply to dissuade me from letting you pierce my heart with that cold blade? A fitting weapon for an unfeeling murderer.”

Akha narrowed his eyes. A peaceful scene comes into his mind. An undisturbed lake. From the spectator's seats, Akane smiled, while Hase, whose interest was piqued by what Akha had stated, leans forward, eyes thoroughly affixed on the two than before.

“Time to end this.” Hina uttered as she dashed with full intent. That reckless move allowed Akha to choose his next attack, he locked eyes with Hina.

“Do you know the difference between a Kinu and a swordsman, Iyone?” He asks.

The world turned completely still, just like in Kado. Suddenly, memories of pain ebbs back into her mind—She remembers everything, every fear-stricken eye of the dead, and the terrible truths that lie beneath it. Finally, she remembers why she picks up the sword. Hina begins to realize— she was not ready to die there. No words came out from her mouth, but she had felt like reciprocating his question.

 “Severance… from the pain of one’s duty” Akha spoke.

Like a peal of lightning, Akha closed the gap and landed an attack. The duel concluded with both backs faced to each other.  The upper portion of the wooden floors were shattered by his move as the Kuzuboki rumbled like the earth had awoken from deep slumber.

Hina fell to her knees, her right hand folding around the hilt of her Kuratashi, her left palm was placed upon her abdomen. A scarlet bloom seeped from Hina’s white robes, she smiled as she attempted to hide the wound and laughs as she realized how much she had also attempted to hide the inevitability of her own defeat.

Hase closed his eyes in disappointment, and Akane looked down to pay respects to the Pact of Blood. All that churned in the old ruler's mind began to incorporate as he reached into his pockets. Forgive me, he spoke to the wind, but Hina was beginning to stand up.

“I have not known my father much… but I know that he loved this land with all his heart, even to go as far as to leave his own daughter to die for it.”

Crimson droplets drizzled from her abdomen and scattering over the ruined floorboards as those who witnessed the supposedly finished duel stare in awe. Hina turned to meet her opponent once again, and this time— a fire, blazing and vehement, burned inhuman behind those eyes. Suddenly, the floor shattered and water snaked up the pillars of the Kuzuboki, slithering through the cracks and bursting forth, fountaining from the ruined ground below them. This water had come from the springs beneath them, the spring from where the dried Yasukagi was planted, and it listened to the movements of her hands.

She hovers her left palm to the Kuratashi, beginning from the guard all the way to the end while speaking of ancient tongue. As her fingers passed through the edge, the droplets around her began to wreathe the steel in a veil of water. 

Her flaming gaze was set upon Akha, and the swordsman lifted his sword to his ear. The battle was far from over.

“So this is the secret technique, and the true form, of Goundo’s River Blade…” Akane whispered, her words were caught by the ears of the founder of the technique himself.

“She is at the peak of Goundan might. I believe even this much power is enough to kill an artless Kinu.”

“Let us see about that.”

The duel was significantly more difficult. With each swing of her sword, the reach delays and is followed by a watery mirage that was just as sharp as the Kuratashi itself, cutting pieces of Akha's clothes and severing even strands of hair that could not catch up to its owner's speed. Arcs of sharp water swung from each swipe and her thrusts were now farther. Akha was at a disadvantage, moving this much to evade these torrential attacks would shorten his breath and deplete his endurance. If this keeps up, Hina may land a blow.

Akane had already gleaned, that from this sudden astonishing display of power, it would only take one strike to conclude this hellish duel.

Akha stares into her eyes— almost as if what he was fighting was no longer human.

“Iyone.” The swordsman called. “Listen to me.”

There was only silence in the ears of Iyone Hina. Her strikes were just as relentless as the first ones, but Akha called once more.

“Iyone Hina.”

“I will fight for what my father died for!”

“Then you fight for the wrong side.”

Akha skidded back, and he reached to his robes a river reed that was dried and folded. It was the same reed that he had been using at the city gates.

The swordsman blew on the hole from where the fiber coiled and a monotonous tone reverberated across the air. Hase’s eyes were filled with trepidation.