The Shadow of Issu

The Hunt

The woods mounted silence in the night, and the deathly fingers of winter clawed where warmth of a hearth burned day and night. The bask of dusk came with, but it had disappeared quickly. Quickly soon after Akha had gotten out from the woods, he reached to the shore where two rivers met.

Near the first river’s waters stood an inconspicuous small shack, a place where a fire in the center burns for all the hours of the day amidst the snow, built upon the ruins of a great tree that no longer bore leaves. It reflected the many things here in Atano, dead, but never forgotten. Even the things that are no longer much use, still was found many ways to be harnessed for benefits.

 Under the harsh and dim brim light of the moon, a man sat on the cold damp grass, snow swept across his old hair and on his beard. His staff lay on his lap, as his eyes stared deep into the emptiness of the black sky. “Master.” The boy greeted, bowing. The man did not wince, not once, but instead, took his time to stare at the boy, motionless and almost half-asleep.

“The moon had already risen.” The old man spoke, his weary eyes had started to turn to a deep white.

“Time fleets quicker if we pay it no mind.” The boy replied. Looking back, he sees lights flicker from the forest canopies, shimmering like stars on a clear water’s surface. “…Strange, it is already fell winter.”

“What of it.”

“The fireflies.”

The old man saw them, too, twinkling in a faint and soft glow, barely visible, or perhaps it was what was left of his eyesight.

“Those are not fireflies— those are spirits. Lost ones, but guided by purpose.”

“How unfortunate, to cling unto hope, do these spirits even know that they are lost?” His tone shifting to one that insinuated a sense of discontent. Frustration? Anger, maybe… but it was merely an assumption.

“Lost, yes. Unfortunate? Maybe not so.”

Akha looked up, and pondered, the snow continued to fall.

“Never forget, Kinu. We are in a broken land. There is not much we can do, for we are broken with it. But for as long as the sun shines for tomorrow’s dawn, our purpose is not over.”

“This land… how long has it been like this?”

The old monk replied with silence then answered. “It does not matter now—a hundred, a thousand, there is no telling how old these woods have stood betwixt life and death. What matters is that we are here, to make sure that all of life does not stray from the Path of White.”

The wind blew bringing in a cold and stinging embrace, Ushio stood up and a deep cough welled from his cages.

“Master, you should go inside,”

“How many times have I told you not to treat me so delicately.”

“There is no telling when weakness will get you, the winds here are never kind and time has caught up with you… To think of it, how long has it already been since you have set foot here?”

“It does not matter,” He coughed again.

“I believe it does so, master. There are far too many things that even a man of your experience has to be concerned of, and though I know you have crossed through many lives and tales, no man is excluded from the toll of the body’s weakness.”

The monk’s face beamed with what resembled a smile, “There is no curing your stubbornness,” He spoke. “Go inside now, we will have supper ready.”

Ushio remained silent, looking up to the stars. He stood up momentarily and followed. The cold winds have become unbearable since Dol come nigh. Akha’s eyes grew dull, empty and unscarred. Ushio entered from the cold gusts that blared outside. It was another freezing night, nothing to fall short of the trials in a land of stark and bitterness. Lifeless, the land has become, and lifeless his eyes have almost seemed. Ushio waits for something—something inevitable, but until then, he must come with a plan to assure the boy’s safety.

Inside the small shack, a fire burns in a small stone pot, providing warmth and a what little illumination it could from its flames within the dimly lit space, filled only with the light from the hearth and a nearby oil lamp made of clay.

“Well now, I am to assume your contraptions have worked as expected?” The Kinu asked.

The boy nodded. “Only the land rarely provides.”

“I see. There is no denying this land, we are to make of what it has to offer.”

He placed over the fire a cauldron of water and bared a sack of winter’s root. “The moon-elks have found these across Jingen. It seems the soil around the great monument is still tolerable to produce these.” Ushio spoke.

“You hiked to Jingen?” The boy asked, with a tone impressed yet doubtful.

“I have hiked worse trails, places with no proper roads and mountains with shifting rocks. Compared to those, Jingen was a mere stroll.”

“Today I performed the rite of beads, I was close to developing one of your techniques, or rather, perfecting a version that has been taught.”

“The Ghan Shin is composed of a myriad techniques and does not wane through time, perhaps to be creative in such an old art would amplify your strengths, I suggest.”

Akha’s eyes had wandered over his hands and compared them to his master’s. They were veined, rigid, and pallid. Almost lacking life. Then he remembers what these hands have wrought throughout the years— a home, built from the ground, of one man’s labor in the deadly cold, with only the boy of mere five winters to assist him. From those hands through fourteen seasons, they have taught the boy the Absolutes of Strength. It was Ushio who had forbid the boy from honing the blade, and so his hands have known only the feeling of a staff. But it was no weapon any lesser than a sword, for Akha had once seen Ushio split a boulder in two with a single strike.

Then he remembers the reason why they have chosen to stay in the deathly reaches of Sureyu. To begin to consider the many graves those hands had dug in reverence to the Path of the White, was to overlook all the blood it had spilled before.

 Akha wanted to ask of his master’s past, but he compelled himself to silence. The boy might have done the Kinu’s work for more than ten years, but he could never come close as to compare what his master has carried, alone, let alone ask of it, for it might come out as arrogance. But then, if that had only been the indication of such hardship, to witness a brooding death would have qualified him to such lengths, or perhaps the precursors of more deaths to come, and more cairns to place.

 It reminded him of the great dangers beyond their Oakwood doors. The thought had chilled his own spine.

 “Something troubles you?”

The young man shook his head. In that falter, the master noticed. Ushio was not a senescent man on the brink of cognitive infirmity. Before his pilgrimage, he was one taught under the doctrines of the Tenshando, and their teachings were none lacking in his mind— their peculiar abilities. By that he could tell the soul of a person just by staring into their eyes.

“You can tell how a man thinks just by looking at the direction of his gaze” He tells the boy.

The feeling of persistence gave off a feeling of annoyance in Akha, so he decided to amuse his master. “I often wonder if rabbits could speak,”

The old man tilted his head, no amusement bore in his face.

“Does the cold ever remind them that they are the weakest? That they are nothing but mere game for predators? If one could think like man; would they ever wish to be stronger?”

And there Ushio saw it. The boy’s eyes were clouded with the fire of his youth. Ushio placed0 his ladle on the table and cleared his throat.

“If it is to become strong that bothers you, then you are better off seeking it somewhere else. Strength is not the hardness of your bone and the endurance of your muscle. Strength, in its purest form, is perseverance. There is no better definition of power but resilience.”

“If one wishes to overcome his trials, do they not wish for strength?”

“Have I ever once told you, to whom the mountains and the sky bow down to?”

Akha gave his master a sharp narrowed look. “Another one of your tales again?” His master only replied in a idle beam of amusement from his face, filled with a shadow that hang above his eyes. “Perhaps,” He spoke, softly. “But you might never tell when it will do you great aid to know of it.”

 The boy fell silent, and his master began his tale.

“Mountains, rivers, the sea— they are the testaments of the gods’ craftmanship. Gods are strange creatures. They are everywhere, but they cannot be seen. They speak, though without a voice, and they carry all the secrets of this world, though refuse to speak of it through mortal ears. We dwell in their creations. But little does one know that we are at the presence of one, even to this godforsaken land of the waste, one god does not leave us.

            It is he whom the mountains, the rivers, and the sea bow down to. He who is not seen, but is felt, and carries history through time and time unceasing. The wind belongs to a god that has shaped the earth and the sky since time immemorial. But the strength of such a god does not boast from the spectacle and power it limns through its canvas, for it is the same god that instils the tranquility of a forest, and he who cradles the world in a breeze through a meadow.

            He has once taken shape into this word, he who is both The Fire and the Wind. But those whom he had come to save shunned him like an outsider. I assume you are well-versed by the tale of the great fall?”

The boy nodded, eyes affixed upon his master and his ears even more.

“Then that is a story for another time. It is even said that to those who are eager to hear his voice, the wind would carry them, and you could hear it.” The master continued. “And these are the same winds that carry yours to him... but it has been silent, for over five-hundred years.”

Ushio took out a small figurine, one shaped like a sparrow, a bird never found in these parts of the South. Akha knew of sparrows, the quick little feathered creatures that rested in lands beyond the cold. “A creature such as this once protected these lands. It is no larger than a child’s hand, and does not boast the strength of a spirit, yet it had watched over these lands for a very long time, there was nothing but peace, for nothing would dare go against the spirit of the storm.”

“I have never seen a spirit”

The old man smiled in amusement. “You would never find a spririt, it is always the other way around.”

When the hum of the night settled, rain soon poured, and the roof clattered with a dull sound. Distant howls came from the forest, wolves, followed by a strange cry—a shriek so brisque and deep, the woods shivered in the sound and came silent but the winds.

“What was that?”

“An old beast has run rampant near the enswoods.” The Kinu brought up, with a voice that seemed shaken by dread. “To think that it would return to Atano. A beast that knows no remorse, and has known nothing but to kill. It has begun to take human lives. I have buried the body of a woman and a child, but it was due south-east to the Creeping Cold, a moon’s travel from here. From the clothing and stones they wore in their corpses, they must have been from Essai. Dire as it seems, maybe they had journeyed to go back home. But now the beast runs amok again in the enswoods, there is no telling when it will reside in Sureyu. Tomorrow, I will confront it and finish what I should have ended so long ago.”

The killings have already begun long before the girl he had to bury in the enswoods. The wound, the deepness of it, and the tear of the flesh. It was no doubt she was killed by the beast. Akha sat there bewildered by his presumptions. Lost in contemplation and regret, that what he should have known was hidden from him for so long.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I fear that you would have taken matters upon your own hands.” Ushio answered.

“Why, master? Have we not wished for so long to finally reach the west? I have done everything that I can to find ways out of Atano, yet you do not seem eager for it.”

Ushio could not deny he resented his inaction, more than Akha could ever resent them. But it was not his fate, he was bound to this world with a burden that he must carry until the end of his life, and this time, he had Akha’s life share the same burden as well.

“It is the task of a Kinu to guide the dead back on the Path of White, but it is no longer our ordeal if the land is beyond us.” He looked to Akha, but in his eyes, he had seen the regret and fear in his own, reflected from the boy’s pupils.

“We have a choice.”

The boy’s naivety was bound on ambivalence towards his duty as a Kinu. Akha has a choice, but he does not. The duty of a Kinu can never finish, and Akha still believes that it will. The boy has a good heart, but it is confused, inquisitive, and it does not know how to be afraid.

“The time for fourteen days when you were of seven winters, I have chased this beast to the tundra of Sureyu. There I took one of its eye, and it gave me one of equal remembrance. This is what happens when you attempt a feat nigh-impossible.” Ushio took off his robe and lifted his right arm. From the side of his chest a long and deep scar ran down. For years Akha had thought a blade had done such a wound, but he had only seen glimpses of it. Ushio was always wary of it. As Akha stared close to the run of ruined flesh on the side of his master’s ribs, forming a hideous scar. He could not bear to imagine the pain that his master had gone through.

“What could have done something like that…”

“A Shibuta.”

“Has it, all these time, been the reason why crossing the Sureyu was impossible…”

In a dense creeping silence, as quick as flicker of a flame, Akha stood up. “I will hunt the Shibuta.” He spoke, but Ushio was already quick to answer.

“You will not.” Ushio voice was like a sword’s clean cut. “I must be the one to do it. Once this beast is gone, you will travel with the herd to the western coasts and live your days in the west seas where peril will no longer follow you.” Ushio continued, as he stood up and walked away, peering outside an open window. Though old and unbefitting for such a task, Ushio knew he had not much of a choice.  The ways of a blade, both from the training of the Kinu’s handle of the Blank Sword’s discipline was still sharp in his mind. “There will be no more deaths.” He ended, there was what seemed like regret in his tone, aged and brooding.

Akha stood there listening in astonishment. What he finally wished, was finally only a moment’s answer. To slay the beast was his awaited path to finally reach the western coasts. But while it opened a path to a life beyond Atano, it will also be a missed opportunity to test his strength… and it was no assurance that Ushio will survive a second confrontation.

But from the master’s mind, Ushio sought nothing else but peace, from nights when voices become louder than the howl of distant wolves. Something hinted Akha that the story was somehow connected to his master. No monk would dare set upon these lands. At least all, but one.

 “Make sure to bar the windows. A storm is brewing.” The Kinu said with his back to Akha as he climbed the ladder to his compartments above them. Akha was alone in the silence, and a deep troublesome question brewed from it.

The meek flicker of the lamp’s flame felt calming. Akha raised the lantern to his lips and blew it softly. The room became dark and silent but the rain did not stop until after midnight, and it was only when the winds slowly receded from its chorus that the night passed by in complete and haunting stillness.

This time, of all the times he had dreamt again of a land of ice and snow.

A sparrow, flying against the winds of winter. Then there came a fog as black as soot from the hearth, swallowing the animal as it disappeared into the dark blizzard. Akha found himself standing atop a river, surrounded by the black mist that consumed everything around him, then there before him it appeared— the face of an eyeless figure, screaming.

 He woke up, in cold sweat, his breaths in quick successions between deep gasps for air. Akha stood up and faced towards an open window, his eyes meeting the young dawning sky that was dark and adorned with the vault of stars, the awaited storm had not passed yet. Ushio was at his compartment, still asleep. In the early hour, Akha’s thoughts burned the most with motives of his own. He wanted answers. Then as if it heard the boy’s dilemma, the moonlight seeped from the open window, gleaming to where his master’s spear had been placed. From there he caught sight of a shallow notch carved into the walls from across the room. He sat up quickly and stood from his sheets.

Akha reached his hand inside the hole and felt rough paper by the edge of his fingers. Reaching further back, he had made out the figure of what seemed like a book and took it out to confirm it. Under the bright light of the moon it revealed what he had expected, a sort of compilation. The binding was torn and several pages were missing. Written in them were various fighting styles—writings detailed of an art that belonged to no master. Ushio would often mention them, and they were said to be over a hundred years old. These were the rumored techniques that are nigh-impossible to master due to the lack of material, and the insurmountable demand of focus and endurance. Ushio had never taught Akha a single one, but he claims to have used them in his lifetime, some only even once, and the Kinu believed his master, for he had seen things Ushio has done that he believes no other man could not. It was a forbidden style, and there it was in front of him.

The style was named Aei Shin.

Ushio had taught some of these forms to Akha, for Atano is opulent with danger, and it was not until his seventh winter that he had finally efficiently learned the spear and the blade. But most of these seemed new and unfamiliar to him.

In his excitement, he placed the book in his satchel, with an unsavory question burning in his mind. This compilation was the answer to what he had been searching for all along. A thing to improve his reflection of strength. But why did his master hide them from him? For whatever reason Ushio hid these texts from him, he was keen to find out.

But as of now, he switched to lighter clothing, and picked up his master’s spear. Akha looked one last time behind him as he approached the door, the light of the moon bleeding dimly into the cold room, its bluish gleam painted across the oak walls.