The Shadow of Issu

When One Bids Farewell

Twenty years have passed since Hase trained his granddaughter to become the most powerful swordsman of all Goundo, and now that she finally is, he could no longer deny that festering sense of regret that stems from the bottom of his heart.

Iyone Hina, a name that which all those who are unlucky enough to be hunted by her blade shiver in fear.

What would Yoshida say if he had come to see his daughter raised to become par with a Kinu. Surely, if they were to share steel in his age, and with Hina’s aptitude, Hase would surely lose. Would her father have been proud? Hase stares up longingly into the sky.

He remembers that Yoshida wanted Hina to become a poet and a writer. She was already quite the fluent girl for her age and her father saw that it was something that she thoroughly enjoyed. Beyond the barbarism and the war that enfolds the lands, it was a breath of relief for Yoshida that his daughter was that acquainted and drawn to literature, despite him being a Tenshando in Goundo’s first Shin.

 Though it was rare for the women to read in Goundo, Hina insisted that she be allowed to read the poems that great philosophers and artisans made, which Hase commands then to be written by the well-read chamber keepers here in the Kuzobuki of Goundo.

It remained as a part of her even when she grew up, for after the two have finished training in the tundra peaks of outskirt Goundo, she would often write poems in a small parchment, keeping them in her robes and letting some be carried into the cold mountain winds as it returned to the sky where all thoughts and daydreams belonged.

If Hase recalls correctly, there was this one mission that Hina returned from and it began a period of which she stopped writing. This was the time that she had left for Koda with ten Tenshando, and returned alone after sending six home earlier.

She never spoke about it, save for the reports regarding the rogue swordsman that hunted there, as far as alibis go, and the casualties it entailed. Whatever happened in Kado, she remained quiet about.

Something about his granddaughter suddenly grew stronger after that sojourn. A growth of one’s resolve, as Hase begins to notice that there was something inside her that gnawed like a wound, something that compels her to relentlessly go through every little possible mission that necessitated killing.

Bandits, murderers, raiders, and most of all, rumors of Ukumari survivors. They all probably heard the swordsman who is Iyone Hina.

In those years, Hase did not seem to take this growth lightly. She had evidently become much more accomplished than what Hase had expected. She had become a completely different person saw after her mission at Kado, and after a few years pass, it finally comes to haunt him. The sole inevitability of the fact that she was proficiently stronger than him, and perhaps all of Goundo bore through him like a thorn. Suddenly, it was not for long that he realized—that if they had held differing beliefs, it would no longer be a surprise that she would raise her sword against him, and Hase would lose to her in a duel, with only the fact that he was family to save him this humiliation. Blood is always thicker than water.

Now that an Ogana diplomat comes to threaten the plans that Hase has in store for Goundo, he could finally come to use this as a way to settle things once and for all. A part of Hase regrets these thoughts, but it was for the good of Goundo, and so the thought simply is subsided by the practicality of his choices. The strongest wills must overcome the weakest of faults, even if it meant that it had to come down to radical solutions.

Hase calls for his granddaughter in his chamber, the cold stinging air was allowed inside, for it was reminiscent of the old days.

Hina comes inside, turns to close the door and bowed. Her eyes were cast downward the entire time, and Hase was drawn towards the sky.

“My lord, you called for me?”

“Take a seat.” He spoke softly, and she followed his command.

He moved and faced towards her.

“You have been informed of Tomoga Akane’s presence in Goundo?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Hase poured a drink and offered her one. She declined and told him to put it away.

“Did I not tell you not to drink?”

Hase smiled. It had been quite the long time since he had drunk freely to his own accord that he had almost forgotten that it was no longer a visitor that he had shared a glass with.

“If it is what you want.” He reassures her, and places the ceramic bottle in plain sight and away.

“Of Tomoga’s presence, what of it?”

“I demanded a Pact of Blood.” Hase answered her with eyes flared of dead-seriousness.

Hina took the tiding with a deep breath, but she evidently looked into her grandfather’s eyes and smiled. Suddenly a wave washed over Hase. A wave that resembled vaguely of guilt or acceptance.

“When will it commence?”

“Three days from now.”

“If it is what you wished, my lord.”

“Goundo never forgets its roots, and we do not stray far from it. We have long proven how we settle our mettles with the other regions through the test of strength, the Pact of Blood… as it is spilled, two share a bond formed through it, you remember this do you not?”

“How long has the Pact of Blood been invoked? Years ago? Decades ago?”

“Do you wish to revoke it?”

Hina answered with a furtive grin. “No, I duly accept it.”

Hase could feel his teeth clench and grit. The mind of a woman was as secretive as the night, and he despised that thought. She used to be so easy to read, like a child, holding up a sack of sewn cotton in shape of a tiger. Vulnerable. Delicate. Dependent. In her youth, she once shown this recklessness that effused a predictive cycle of weakness, now, Hina hides everything behind that sinister grin of hers, and Hase began to feel threatened by it.

In the recent months, when he wakes in cold sweat and catching breaths, it was to wake from dreams of terribly situations, which more so terrified him because they seemed like credible and believable circumstances— nightmares they were most adequately described. It flashed in his eyes in rapid successions, dreadful scenarios. But one vision had him staring into the empty walls of his chambers as he sunk into his own degenerative thoughts. The dreams that recurred where Hina overthrows his own rule and leads Goundo to an impending ruin. It was the final fall of Goundo, a divide that returns to its righful desolation. It was the one dream that Hase wished to never see.

 Of late, he has recently been having these thoughts brew in his mind, all in brooding quietness with the soothing fragrance of persimmon tea beside him. Every time he glances at his own granddaughter, he no longer sees that sweet child he once knew. He saw a threat, and every fiber of his being urged to weed out anything that dare go against the will of Goundo.

“Are you not loathe to die?” He begins to ask bluntly.

“My lord, is not death something that is frequent of persons such as ours? We live and die by the blade, those are the words of the great Goundo Hase himself, but…” She turns to the direction where the paper door opened to the great azure expanse, ashen with clouds and draped in deep forlorn. “I am afraid that I may die without fulfilling a purpose.” She looks down at her Kuratashi.

“Purpose?” Hase asked.

“My lord, it has been twenty years, and still you have not given an answer as to why I hold the sword, nonetheless, I live and breathe to carry the duty that entails that from the oath of a Tenshando of Goundo. But any answer from you, I have not heard, once. You were silent during the times we crossed swords, and brooded in your own chambers estranged from your only family. I took it upon myself to hold a purpose that which reason be bequeathed upon my ability as a swordsman...” Hina paused and looked upon her sword. Thoughts ran around her mind—her mother, the four she had lost in the woodlands of Kado, and her father.

“Forgive me, Hina, but often times the truth is not something that we want to hear. The world is a callous and ruthless place, and it is only through the misery that we experience from it will we grow to become stronger. But I will tell you this much…”

What words that his grandfather told her turned Hina’s spirit into ice. He had spoken of men from ancient tales woven in tales to scare disobedient children. An old and terrible truth of monsters and creatures that took on the appearance of men, roaming the world and driving it to the brink of anarchy. Though it was likely that the Ictha Shinu were responsible for his father’s death, she needed to confirm it, yet all that hate and vengeance had to go somewhere, and it concentrated towards her vendetta against the one called Rayone.

Recalling to that night in Kado, the deaths did not simply end there. Hina never saw Hiro and Yua again, and she contemplates on the day when she can thrust her sword deep into Hiro’s own heart for abandoning them in a forest that crept an ancient malice.

Hina fell on the cold stony ground in the middle of the woodland’s clearing that night. When she woke up, everything was in absolute ruination. The first light came to shine upon the s*******r—where the house once stood, there remained a ruined and desolate place, reduced to splinters and ash. Blood sprayed across every inch of grass and stone, now dried and dark. Maru lay cold and pale somewhere in the ruins, and the body of Ichiru was bent and twisted from some distance from her.

She stumbles across the overgrown roots and the bushes, and there lying under the shade of some white-leafed tree, the headless body of Minato was cradled in its roots. Every part of her was bruised, some ribs felt broken, and her shoulder made a strange cracking sound every time she tries to swing her arm, yet she hustles on, digging four graves in the middle of everything, dragging the corpses of her fellow Tenshando and placing them in their own furrows.

It took half a day for her to bury them, and when it was finally over, she fell to her knees and prayed.

Suddenly it rained.

She walked in the forest for a long time. Very long. That it had felt like she had meandered around for days.

When her body and her spirit had finally given up, she fell upon the ground. She was lost deep inside a dream, a reverie that felt all too familiar, yet ambivalently unknown—akin to something that one sees for the first time, only to feel a strange connection to it, a feeling that transcends simply familiarity.

 If there was one thing that the Ictha Shinu forgot to consider about the Hundan Pass, it was that it never discriminated. It was a portal of dreams and possibilities that come as revieries, ordaining situations that could happen anywhere or anyone. Some are told to be foreshadows of the future, yet even then, it was never definite—the visions, in meaning and context, as Hina saw, were all too ambiguous, but the picture before her remained crystal clear.

A desolate land of sand and ash, all swallowed in darkness, and beyond that seeping black veil, a tree that crawled to the sky. It glowed luminescent, and in a color that she could not distinguish. She sledded downhill to approach it, and around her began to resonate the distinctive noise of war, but she was covered in reaching blackness and there was nothing around her but the deafening sounds of steel clashing against steel and the swift passing sound of arrows.

As she set upon the land, she comes upon the tree’s borders which were lined by numerous Kuratashis struck to the ground with pommels pointing to the sky. In the middle of the tree, encased in the roots, a blade glowed brighter than the others. There was a name upon it, and the name seemed familiar. Then she gasps a wave of memory ebbing through her. Hina suddenly remembers. The shock in her eyes corporates her disbelief. How could she have missed such a chance?

She woke up that day with that vision branded deep into her mind. Someday, she believed that they were going to meet again.

Hina continued her journey, stealing a horse in Kado in the dead of night and taking the western marshes to keep a low profile. On her way to Goundo, the northeast road opened to the calmer, deeper parts of one of the major canals of the southern Katen rivers, where a trading ship has been capsized by the shore. The ship seemed to have been there for a measly few days, and this far from the next boating town, no one would have stumbled upon here.

She lowers from her steed and waddles across the hip-deep bog to the ship. Nearing the overturned boat, she began to notice the dead bodies that sunk to the river ground. She finally comes upon the hull of the ship and climbs into the deck.

What she found utterly left her speechless, but from the horrors that she had witnessed nights ago, what could possibly surprise her now?

Mushigou Chou was found dead lying on the walls of the ship as it shuddered as if alive. The scene was macabre— his limbs were twisted and misshapen, the blood around him seemed like it was painted with precision rather than splattered randomly across the wall. His chest opened while his ribs stretched facing outwards like lotus petals, revealing a hollow space where flowers took place instead of viscera. Perhaps the strangest concept that concluded the perpetrator of this horrible m******e was that the blood on the walls was still fresh, bright rosy red, despite the wear that the ship has received from the many days that may have passed.

She reached her hand over Chou, and she could feel a slight, awkward pulse running through her skin. She noticed that the dust around the body had also frozen into place.

She recognized the technique, and instantly knew who the killer was.

The words of Rayone rung clear in her mind, the words that bore the intention of the Ictha Shinu. We wanted all to know that we still exist. And suddenly, that dreadful visage flashed in Hina’s mind, and her hand had unconsciously drawn her sword.

“Forgive me.” She whispered as she sheathes the Kuratashi back.

She turns away from the gruesome scene and returns to the main road. From the time that passed since those nightmarish events, Hina could not write a single word. For when she does, she remembers everything. It carried on like this until three years passed and she is now taken face to face with her grandfather, whom offered her as a tribute to the Pact of Blood.

If she was to say that no pain welled from inside her when her grandfather decided this, then she would be lying to herself.

Impossible. She whispered inside her head. Truly impossible.

Akha—something about him reminded Hina of her reverie back at Kado, but now, she seemed to have forgotten all about it, like as if it was some passing dream not worth remembering. But if there was one thing for sure, it was that to duel with Kinu was to greet death straight into his eyes.

The Kinu may be the strongest blademasters of all Issu, but they are not invincible. Many have met their ends by the hands of mere swordsmen who garnered talent through their own esoteric techniques. Despite the Kinu’s edge that is attested by the magnificent display and skillful practice of a blade art, many of their adversaries have dedicated to the art of Kinu hunting—a type of blade work that allowed one to circumvent a Kinu’s traditional style.

Which brought Hina to Goundo five years ago to Ogana where she wanted to find a blademaster who could teach her the technique.

Hina thought that if she would be able to take on a Kinu, then perhaps… she could level her swordsmanship with an Ictha Shinu. It was an assumptive and reckless foresight, but one that led her somewhere—to meeting Akha.

The words of Izuki ran inside her mind. “Those whom the Kinu serve become unassailable. No one in the history of Issu has one died from assassinations when under a Kinu’s protection, until…”

What has that Bladesworn gotten himself into? She asks herself.

Later that night, Hina could not get any sleep.

Possibilities ran inside her mind, but it all comes down to nothing. If she could persuade the Kinu to join her in her hunt against the Ichtha Shinu, it would benefit Goundo, if not all of Issu. But she knew how stubborn her grandfather was, and lately, it had seemed like he had begun to drift further away. The man that she once upheld with great respect and reverence becomes something more like a shadow of his former self.

She does not question him, and she would, without hesitation, draw her blade for him and Goundo.

But why now, why this…

Whom holds conviction, holds true purpose, but hers was to end by the end of tomorrow, for there is only one victor in a Pact of Blood. In her chambers, her cries echoed only to the night.

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In the quiet and blackness of dusk, Hase walks to the farthest part of the Kuzuboki gardens. In Issu, the south welcomes the winter first, and Goundo was stationed between mountain ranges draped in snow and ice for thousands of years.

He meanders upon the cold evening, and the first snow begins to fall from above him.

Winter finally comes. He spoke to himself.

Suddenly behind him, a shadowy figure drops from the heights of the Kuzuboki and lands on the ground. His landing suppressed any sound, and he stood straight up to approach the old ruler.

“I have waited for you, Goundo Hase.” A voice rattles.

The ruler did not answer then. He simply took his time to appreciate the light snow that falls upon them in such an early winter. There are at least fourteen days before the beginning of winter, and yet snow had already fallen from the sky. This echoes through the tale of the Yasukagi, and now with no harvest borne in Goundo, no persimmons borne from the trees, no one could surely tell of the dreadful winter that awaits Goundo.

“Did you wait long?”

The man circled around him, like wolves upon a wounded prey. The man bore a large Kuratashi, significantly longer and larger than those held by the Tenshando.

 “Patience truly isn’t for everyone.” He spoke.

Hase let out an amused expression. “A man as yourself, you should already be well acquainted with patience.”

“So will she do it?” The man digressed.

“She will.”

The man paused, and something of a grin bore to his face. “To witness him alive and well,” The amused look on his face quickly subsided to an austere countenance. “It proves only how resilient he has become. But Iyone Hina is also something far from mundane as well— she is a prodigy of the blade, and she will be a good way to test the limits of the Kinu’s skill. He has disappeared for almost two years. We do not know the extent of his aptitude, and that if he has acquired some form of… blade art.”

“Yes.”

“And your granddaughter…”

“She will die by the hands of this Akha.”

“Then you should know what comes next.”

“Yes, I do.” Hase’s tone wavered.

The man’s sounded appeased. He goes behind the old lord, surmising if this man’s regrets may emerge to falter his decisions, that is if he had any. But from what the man concludes, Hase had already sunk far enough into the depths of desperation to be able to redeem himself. There was no backing out. It was either power or submission.

What has Ogana to offer Goundo but rice?

“Goundo will live through this winter. Have faith in these words.” He assured him.

Hase nodded in response and the man, who was taller than Hase, placed his hand upon his shoulders.

“You are part of something far much bigger than yourself, Hase. Bigger than Goundo. It is inevitable. There is nothing that we can do but submit, and it is not too late. You have made a good choice, Goundo Hase. When the duel is over, do not forget the calling reed.”

“You told me that you do not serve the Teyan, then…” As he turned around, the man had disappeared into the night, vanishing into thin air.

 “Who have you really sworn to?” He questioned, and a part of him felt like he had stared into his own reflection, asking the same question. Hase casts his gaze to the dark sky, where the snow continued to fall, melting upon the furrows of his face.

He turns his back and is welcomed by the warm fires inside the Kuzuboki. Dawn will come soon, and Tomoga Akane will bring forth the infamous Akha, the former Kinu, for the Pact of Blood. He takes each dredging step with a heavy soul as he approaches to the paper doors of his own granddaughter.

Hase placed his fingers to them, and he was taken back into a far memory.

“Why do the birds fly north for winter, grandfather?”

Hase looks up, the scar on his left eye had only recently healed, though the pain lingered still, like a soft voice in a dark room, clawing against the walls.

“The cold of winter do not do good for these birds, little one.”

The autumn sky was upon them, and Hina was only nine. They travelled half a day towards one of the hillsides located east of Goundo, a place of memorials for all the fallen heroes before them and those yet to come. It has been almost two years after Yoshida’s death, and they have come to visit his tombstone that lay in the middle of a clearing, a place of great honor.

Nizu, Hina’s mother, was praying at a shrine just a few walks from where they were seated. The breeze of autumn filled the air with a deep familiar ache as the leaves depart from dying branches to be cradled by the wind, taken to places far and deep into Goundo’s valley.

“Why can’t they stay?”

“They will die if they do. When winter comes, food becomes scarce. Without food, these birds will surely meet their end.”

“Then why do we not go north when winter comes, grandfather?”

Hase smiled to the first thought, but a far much harder truth which hindered acceptance was behind that light-hearted though pensive statement.

“Our land, Hina. It may not be much, but it is ours. You know of the Great Persimmon Tree, do you not?”

“The Yasukagi?” She exclaims in delight remembering the name.

“Very good.” Hase’s countenance became amused as his eyes shifted to the overlooked valley before them. “These forests, these rivers, these mountains— they are all ours, as much as they are yours. It is our duty to protect it. It is where we are and who we are as a people.”

“Even if the soil is too sour to grow rice?”

“Yes, Hina. Even if the soil is too sour to grow rice.”

Hina rests her head on her grandfather’s lap, then she begins to doze to a sleep. The walk from the foot of the hill to the top was quite an endeavor and it would be natural for a child to be worn from it. His fingers, scarred, thinly, and pale, hovers above her head as he began to caress his granddaughter’s hair.

“You are not even of my blood… yet, I already hold fondness for your spiritedness.” He smiles.

The girl did not answer. Her face, at peace and deep in sleep.

Later that day, he spoke something to Hina the moment she wakes up from her nap. She had quite the sleep for she was remembered to have rested on his lap until sundown came to greet them. All this time, Hase was in deep contemplation, thinking of what could happen lest he strays away from a path of his self-imposed righteousness. Hase, whose eyes were gazing longingly into the swirling clouds that ornamented a lamenting sky, knew one day, that this moment of bliss will come to an end.

“Promise me, you will protect Goundo…even if mountains fall, or the seas run dry. Protect what is rightfully ours, even if you have to kill me for it.”

He lifts his hand from the paper door, and Hase’s dead eyes became like what it once was.

“Do not forget your promise, little one.” He whispers. “As I have forgotten mine.”

Then he turns to open his chamber’s windows, and the first light of daybreak came to greet him.