Ginko looked surprised for a moment. “That’s very admirable, but I don’t think one person can stop a war.”
“For now, I’m just trying to prevent it from not getting worse… which is why I need your help in neutralising this blade they’re housing in the temple. The Vermilion clan plans to use it to gain more power.”
“I’m not an exorcist.”
“I know, you said that. But you seem to know more than anyone else I’ve talked to, and if you can see things no one else can, maybe you can still help me in some way.”
“I’m also not a fighter.”
“Are you a pacifist?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Good, then you’re coming with me.”
Ginko sighed again. The thin stream of smoke from the cigarette in his hand curled through the air. “Don’t let me die.”
“I won’t.”
“Take me to this cursed blade then, and I’ll see what I can do. But no promises.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” I said.
We started making our way through the impoverished town, when suddenly the rain began dripping down around us. When we reached the temple, another gate with two Niō on either side stood before us, and the long-awaited banner popped in front of my eyes.
“Now entering Stage ‘Namida-jinja, the Tearful Shrine’.”
The sound of fingers plucking on the strings of a Koto played sorrowfully through the air. It had a slightly disturbing feel to it, as though it wasn’t just playing a sad melody, but actually telling a terrifying story with every measured note. For some reason it reminded me of snow.
“How do you suppose we’ll get in there?” I asked my companion. My previous tactic of crawling over the wall might still work, but it would be risky if the place was guarded.
Before he had a chance to answer, the gate began opening from the inside and we only barely managed to hide behind one of the muscular statues, before a large group of black, grey, and white warrior monks emerged from within and ran across the town, likely to face the incoming Vermilion threat, whose violent shouting beyond the walls was now audible even from where we were.
“Are they under attack from outside?” asked Ginko. Again, I wondered how on earth he’d arrived here and not noticed these things.
It’s almost as if he was teleported here… or, maybe he’s just a bit of an airhead.
“Best not to think about it, let’s just finish the job we were sent here to do. Come on, we can make it through the gate before they close it again!”
I didn’t give Ginko the chance to protest and started running for the open gate. To his credit, he was able to keep up with me, despite the heavy burden on his back.
We had only just made it inside, when someone yelled out a warning. Clearly, they were on high alert and had spotted us immediately, but now that we were inside, I could let my obsidian edge take it from here.
A group of warrior monks charged for us, and immediately Ginko fell back behind the cover of a nearby outhouse. The monks were armed with Tachi, longbows, and Naginata spears. They all wore white cowls and various assortments of either kimonos or Samurai armour. I was honestly quite surprised to see how well-kitted they were, but I supposed there had to be a reason why this temple hadn’t been breached. Until now…
I felt the killing calm descend upon me, and I pulled my black katana from its sheath in a Quick Draw and caught one monk in the armpit, right as he was about to hammer his long blade down on me. My blade continued uncontested through his upper torso, cutting him in two. Using the momentum, I spun and ran my sword through another one’s spear shaft, leaving him with a useless half in each hand and a deep fissure along his stomach and chest. As I turned towards a third, an arrow punched me in the side, blocked by my sturdy cuirass, but nonetheless pushing me off balance right as another spear jabbed at me.
My reflexes had me immediately adjusting, and I spun my body ninety degrees, letting the killing tip slide uselessly along my armour, before spinning around again to grab his shaft and pull him towards me, piercing him through the chest with my sword.
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I pulled my blade from his body, just as another arrow hit me in the chest, bounding off my armour and pushing me back. Another monk charged at me with a furious cry and I easily sidestepped his blade, then hammered my own into his stomach and used his forward momentum to cut through him and pull my katana free.
The third arrow to come my way I managed to swat from the air, though I honestly couldn’t tell you how, as my body was almost entirely working off of muscle memory at this point. I was sure that in the past I’d practiced a lot to learn that, but now it came to me so effortlessly. The reason why I retained this knowledge was probably because the memory targeted and removed by resetting in this realm was of a different sort than what muscle memory belongs to.[1]
The longbowman scrambled as I closed in on him, but didn’t have the chance to unsheathe his sword, and my edge cut through the bow he tried to block with and settled in his shoulder, snagging on the corner of his chestpiece, but still managing to sever the artery in his arm, bleeding him out within moments.
As I laboriously wiggled my blade free of its leather-and-metal trap, Ginko came up to me, his usually bored expression traded for a serious one.
“I had to,” I told him, for some reason trying to defend my actions from his judgemental gaze.
He didn’t respond.
We left the bodies in the courtyard before the gate, while the relentless downpour continued. Beyond the courtyard were finely-constructed temple buildings of many varying functions. The largest of the buildings, besides the dark-brown four-storey pagoda nestled in the distant corner of the temple complex, was a two-storey red, white, and black building behind a modest shrine. To our right was a Zen stone garden, and beyond, a luscious flower garden, with a thin stream snaking through it and leading to a Koi fish pond. There was also a bathhouse and a massive iron bell under its own red wooden shelter.
A group of three unarmed monks, all of them dressed in robes of black over white, emerged from the shrine, one yelling a hurried command that sounded like, “Protect the sword!” As one, they hurried in the direction of the two-storey building and we chased after them, however, before we could catch up, another group of warrior monks flanked us from the bathhouse. One of the spear-wielding monks wore almost an entire set of Samurai armour, minus the fancy helmet, which meant that his head was still an obvious weak point. The three longbowmen were by far the bigger threat of their group.
I slapped an arrow from the air before it could hit my companion, and he quickly sought refuge inside the shrine behind us, just as two more arrows found a home in my unarmoured shoulder and the dense wooden pillar of a Torī gate[2] behind me. The impact knocked me back, splattering my blood across a decorative stone lamp next to the orange-red Torī. There were stone lamps in two rows, one on either side in front of the four-metre-tall gate, and the remnants of melted candle wax coated their interiors. The lamps had four sides, one which was open and three others that had been carved out in a way that, when lit, would reveal elaborate symbols to worshippers as they entered the open shrine. The openness of the shrine was one thing that I found interesting, as not even a knee-high fence demarcated where the Buddhist sacred ground ended, and the Shinto shrine began. Within was a modest little hut, with a bell beneath the roof, attached to a thick rope for people to shake and make it jingle-jangle. An offering box stood past the rope, and within the shrine interior was a marble-white statue of a furious tiger atop a rock, with the letters虎白[3] written beneath on a metal plaque.
Anyway, what was I doing? Oh, right…
I fell to my knees behind the lantern, letting the arrows of the longbowmen hammer uselessly against the stone, while I hoped for the feeling to return to my right hand. I won’t lie: it was pretty bad. The pain from the arrowhead lodged in my shoulder felt like a tiny person trying to cut his way out, while also occasionally scratching along my collarbone. It wasn’t bleeding anywhere near as much as I thought it ought to, but it was clear that I wasn’t in any shape to hold my sword and I doubted I was much of a leftie, even in a pinch. Nonetheless, I picked up the sword with my left hand, and pushed my weight against it as I tried to stand. Immediately a set of arrows slapped against my cuirass, probably bruising my skin beneath, which no doubt already looked like some kind tortured canvas upon which an imitation of a Picasso painting was inscribed in the bruised hues of black, blue, yellow, and purple. I was knocked to the ground, and quickly sought cover behind a different lantern.
Using my left hand, I fumbled through my inventory and pulled out the ‘Potent Healing Potion’. I had wanted to save it for something more serious, but then, not being able to use my primary hand was pretty serious. Just as I had managed to pull the cork from the flask using my teeth, an arrow scraped along my stone cover, shredding the skin on my exposed left hand in passing. The pain and suddenness made me lose my grip on the neck of the flask, which tumbled from my hand in slow motion and shattered tragically against the ground, as though it was made from the most brittle of materials.
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[1] Kind of like how some Alzheimer’s sufferers still know how to drive, even if they can’t remember directions.
[2] Literally meaning “bird residence”, referring to an archway denoting the entrance to a Shinto shrine. You may be wondering what a Shinto archway would be doing inside a Buddhist temple, but, you see, Japanese temple builders never were much sticklers for purism, and the worshippers didn’t seem to mind the religious double-dipping, so…
[3] Pronounced “Byakko”, meaning, “White Tiger”. Like a lot of the writing in the temple, it was written backwards, though I couldn’t tell you why.