Inaki swung his sword, still sore from his wounds. It had been a few days now since his fight with the Yaroka patriarch, and though the wounds were slowly fading from his body, the wounds were still fresh in his mind.

There were two ways to prevent the war, Inaki had realized. Either he could offer his head up to the Yaroka, or he could go to Yaroka castle, challenge the patriarch to a sword duel, with no handicaps this time and somehow win.

But that was as unlikely as Inaki sprouting wings and flying into the Yaroka castle. No, it was only unlikely at Inaki’s current training level.

Inaki had only one month left. If in this one month he wasn’t able to decide something, it would be his head. In fact today was the day that the sword masters that Hassai had left in his place would be discussing what was to be done.

Would the masters be ready to offer up Inaki’s head to stop a war? It didn’t help that they all blamed Inaki’s stupidity for the Yaroka patriarch getting away. But Inaki thought that was the best he could’ve done on the spot. Now Inaki just had to prove that to the council of masters that his father deemed wise enough to rule in his absence.

Inaki stepped back, and stared at the dummy. He wanted to stop thinking about this situation for a few minutes, and this would be his way to do it. Inaki concentrated, imagining the dummy in half, but he couldn’t focus. Everytime he tried to think about anything, he ended up remembering getting punched by Taral. He tried to push through it, he tried to stop it, but he couldn’t help but remember.

He ran at the dummy and swung his sword. It hit the wooden dummy, and barely even dented it. His concentration had been horrible. Inaki sighed. He was haunted by how horribly he had been defeated.

Inaki sheathed his sword and looked at the spring. It had been a few days since he had gone in there. As a matter of fact, the last time he had entered the spring was when he found out that his father would be returning. He didn’t know what he would even say to the Hassai in his head if he entered the spring. That he is the cause of a possible war? No he couldn’t do that whatsoever.

He decided to jump into the spring anyway. He took off his clothes and jumped into the spring. He found himself in the infinite black waters, the image began forming around him, but this time, the image of his father did not form.

He stood in the entrance hall of the castle, surrounded by all of the members of the Tomoka family. Hassai was nowhere to be seen.

No, I don’t want to be here.

Taral was standing in front of Inaki. He was holding a wooden practice sword, and was ready to fight. Taral rushed at Inaki before the vision had even fully formed.

Inaki tried to step to the side, but it was like Taral knew that Inaki was going to dodge in that direction. The wooden practice sword slammed into Inaki’s side, he hit the ground. His sword left his hand. Inaki looked around him, his sword was nowhere to be seen.

Inaki forced himself to stand up. Taral stepped forward, and stabbed his practice sword forward, right into Inaki’s ribs. Inaki felt his heart skip a beat. He was thrown onto his feet. He tried to stand up once again.

Taral turned into a flash, he hit Inaki in the back, then appeared in front of him and slammed his sword into Inaki’s jaw. Then Taral threw down his practice sword, and drew his actual sword.

He stepped forward and slashed his sword down. Inaki screamed in pain. Taral slashed his sword sideways into Inaki’s flesh. It protested, and Taral continued dragging his sword through.

Inaki screamed in pain. His whole body burned. Why had he gotten this vision? His head surfaced from the spring, he climbed out of it, and covered himself in his robe like it was a blanket. He laid in the grass, staring into the ceiling. This was the first time that after going into the spring, he hadn’t seen a vision of his father.

Inaki dressed himself and walked into the training hall. He went and sat down in front of his father’s portrait and said, “Don’t worry father, I will make sure that this war never happens. I will defeat Taral, and I will make a name for myself.”

Inaki walked out of the training hall into the castle proper. The Tomoka castle housed all the main Tomoka family members, which involved all the successors of Hassai’s grandfather. Hassai’s grandfather had three sons including Hassai’s father, which meant that the entire castle housed at least a hundred members of the family, with Ivanta, Inaki and Gonten being the only ones directly related to Hassai, except his brothers. But that did not mean that the castle was cramped by any means. It was a large building, and the training hall garden was only one of the many exits of the castle.

Inaki walked out into the main entrance hall of the castle, and began climbing up the steps to the audience hall. He found all around him, people who only belonged to the Tomoka clan by name, and not by blood running around the place, some cleaning up the place, some serving the blood-Tomokas and others just lazing at their jobs. Inaki tried to hold in his disgust for now. After climbing for three floors he found himself outside the audience hall.

The council of masters that Hassai had left were four men and one woman. The woman being Inaki’s mother Ivanta. Of the entire council, Huojin was the closest to Hassai. Which is why Inaki expected the most support out of him.

Inaki took a deep breath in, put his hand on the handle of his sword, and entered the audience hall. The audience hall was a room too wide for the current meeting, because usually this was for all the people of the castle to congregate in one place. But now, there were only six people in the room. The four sword masters, Ivanta, and Inaki himself. And since Inaki’s hand was on his sword, Hassai was there too.

Inaki stepped forward, trying to channel the same confidence that had entered him when he had confronted Taral. But he remembered what that had led to. Still a little bit shaky, he stood beside a chair at the main table, where the other five were already seated.

“Oh, you’re here,” Yuril said. He was the oldest one on the board, a man who advised Hassai before he became the Sword-Sage. He was bald and hairless, like a baby with wrinkles.

“The whole reason we are having this conversation,” Goren said. He was a man closer to Hassai’s age, a well-built man with a few streaks of gray in his head. He was at the same level as Taral, but had been outside the city on the day of the confrontation.

“You can’t blame the boy Goren,” Huojin said. “We practically forced him to deal with Taral on his own.”

“He is the son of Hassai,” Ivanta said. “If he is to call himself that, dealing with an opponent with words as well as a sword should be in his repertoire.”

“For Okan’s sake, he doesn’t even have his steel blade yet,” Huojin said.

“I am sorry, but may I sit down,” Inaki said.

“Oh, sorry, you may sit down,” Goren said.

The other two elders sat there quietly. One was Kashim, a man you thought of when you thought grand-father, and the other one was Tojo, a man older than Goren but younger than Kashim.

Their silence perturbed him.

“Ivanta, you are adept at calling out your sons for his faults,” Huojin said. “But this is not about that. This is about what course of action must we take for the sake of our clan.”

“Why are we so scared of war with the Yarokas,” Goren said, keeping his sword on the table. “We’ve got enough swordsmen, and enough talent to be able to fight them off.”

“Lord Hassai returns soon,” Yuril said. “Do you wish to welcome him with war?”

“I don’t want to welcome him with one of his sons dead,” Goren said. It wasn’t said, but the implication in the air wasn’t just one son dead, it was the good son dead.

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Opening his mouth for the first time, Tojo said, “I say a war is better than any other alternative.”

“Or,” Inaki said, putting his wooden practice sword on the table. “You give me my swordsman’s ceremony a year earlier, give me a sword, and I go and challenge the patriarch to a duel. If I win, this is all over.”

The masters seemed shocked. They looked each other in the eyes, they tried to hold in their laughter, but it of course came out.

“Look at your face, boy,” Goren said. “He spent most of the fight trying not to draw blood and he did this to you. If he did this to you with his fist, imagine what he’ll do with a sword.”

“Thanks for giving me a good laugh,” Tojo said. “But anyways kid, you’re nineteen now, it isn’t the time to talk like a child.”

“We have one whole month,” Inaki said. “I can train.”

“Go from being a woody to a platinum, in one month,” Goren said. “That’s almost an insult to me.”

“You all know that I am not the same level as a woody,” Inaki said. Inaki felt like a walking contradiction. He spoke as if he was confident in his abilities, but he doubted his own words the minute he said them.

“You think yourself so high and mighty,” Hassai whispered into Inaki’s ears. “You wouldn’t win against Taral if he was a bloody Silver.”

“How about this,” Inaki suggested. “Goren, you come with me. Challenge the patriarch in my name, win the battle.”

“You know that he’ll not accept a duel like that,” Goren said. “Besides, why are you so keen on not wanting war?”

“Because I don’t want to welcome my father back to a war that I caused,” Inaki said. “I would be the biggest disappointment then.”

“And I don’t want these gray hairs, kid,” Goren said. “But we don’t get what we want.”

“Wait,” Inaki said. “If we have our sage, and they don’t have theirs it becomes illegal for us to wage war right?”

“Yes,” Goren said. “The coalition of sages did decide that, but how are we supposed to get him back? By the time Lord Hassai comes back, the war would have started.”

“I could go find him,” Inaki said.

“But what if the time he has given is just to travel back here,” Goren said. “Face it kid, there’s no way to stop war. Besides, why do you care? We can fight it, and if Lord Hassai returns after the war starts, the war will have to stop anyways.”

“But it’s not about that,” Inaki said. “I want to welcome my father back to harmony.”

“Well, now the discussion is fruitless. But let’s vote anyway, who is in support of going to war? Inaki, you do not have a vote.”

All five of them raised their hands. All of them left the room except Kashim, who had been silent the entire time. He had been sitting back in his chair, almost disinterested in the rest of the conversation.

“What happened kid, why do you really not want there to be war?” Kashim asked.

“I don’t want to—”

“I want the real reason, not the bullshit one that you were giving everyone else.”

“I… I don’t care about war,” Inaki admitted to himself.

“Then what do you care about?” Kashim said.

“I need to fight and defeat Taral, the patriarch, I lost my honor,” Inaki said.

“Why do you think that we didn’t step in yesterday,” Kashim said.

“Because you wanted to test me on how I would deal with the situation,” Inaki said.

“And you failed,” Kashim said.

“Yes, next time I will try to use my words only.”

“No,” Kashim said. “That wasn’t your mistake.”

“Then what was it?”

“Your mistake was not using your words, and then losing,” Kashim said. “This is not a sword, I am not allowed to give you a sword, but if you are smart enough, you can use this.”

Kashim put a box on the table, and pushed it at Inaki. Inaki opened the box, and saw that it contained within it a long dagger. It was half the length of the average sword, and in a sheath.

“Do well, Hassai’s son,” Kashim said, getting up and walking out of the room.

“You couldn’t even convince them, could you,” Hassai said. “It's all your fault. You just had to kill him, prove your superiority. A son who causes a war in my absence, is not worthy of being called my son.”

“I am sorry,” Inaki said.

Inaki got up from his seat, and stepped out of the room. He walked through the castle hallways, and towards his training room. He didn’t know what to do.

There was one thing he could try. Takehito-son-Ganryu. A great swordsman, the son of father’s master. Maybe he could teach me how to get good enough to beat him.

Inaki walked into his room. He had his monthly allowance, a few clothes, his wooden practice sword, and the long knife that Kashim had given him. He sheathed it and put it under his robe. Last thing he wanted was anyone to see him with a steel weapon. He carried with him another wooden sword, just in case his sword broke. He packed this all into a small cloth, tied it onto his bag, and left the house, looking for Takehito, the man who could possibly teach him to be better than a platinum in a month.

He began running down the street towards the walls of the city. It would take him at least an hour walking or half an hour running to reach the nearest city gate. Takehito would be off towards the Gael, Inaki would probably be able to catch up to them if he kept going without sleeping or resting for a few days.

He was breathing hard by the time he reached the eastern gate, he walked over to the guard and said, “Do you know the directions to Gael.”

“Yes,” The guard said. “You have to go to Yaroka then take the ferry to Hayan, then from there you walk to Gael, why do you ask, young master?”

“Thank you, I’m just looking for someone.”

Inaki thought it was divine cruelty, that if he wanted to catch up to the monk, he would need to go through the very land that he wanted to defeat.

He left the castle, and began walking through the forest territory. A day's walk away from Yaroka.

----------------------------------------

Ivanta walked out of the conference hall. She didn’t remember the last time she had spent any significant amount of time with either of her sons in the same room except for meals.

Hassai was returning. And Inaki had said that he wanted him to come home faster. But the truth was, the last thing that Ivanta wanted was for Hassai to return.

She ran down one of the many hallways in the castle, and climbed up to the highest floor in the castle, and walked into her rooms. The rooms that she would have to share with Hassai once again when he returned.

All of her clothes were long sleeved, She hadn’t worn any of her dresses which even showed her arms. Always covered in drapes. There was a reason for that.

She raised the sleeve of her dress and looked into the mirror. She saw her wounds, her scars, all given to her by a man the others called great, and that she was forced to call great.

And now he would be coming back. Ivanta didn’t know what to do. The last eighteen or so years had been the greatest of her life, except for the walking shadow of the man, his younger son. Ever since they had gotten the news a few days ago, she had spent her time in her rooms crying.

She looked under her bed. She had packed a bag filled with her clothes, money that she had been collecting for the past eighteen years, skimming off the top of the taxes and other revenue of the clan.

With this much money she could run away.

But where?

Ivanta sat in her bed and stared at the mirror at her bedside. She got up from her bed and walked to her balcony. She stared into the territory of the man who she had to call great and realized that there was nowhere for her to run. Where it wasn’t his territory, he still had influence. There was nowhere that she could go, where she would be safe from Hassai.

Ivanta had sent out a letter a few months ago, she had sealed it, hoping that it would not be read by the messenger, and luckily it hadn’t, because that morning, she had gotten a response to her letter.

It was the only place that she could think of, but also the most risky place to ask.

Her own family.

She opened up the letter and began reading.

“Hello, this is your mother here. We hear you out, we understand that Hassai will be returning soon, but you leaving is not an option. If we take you in, we will become fugitives everywhere in the world. You know that we cannot do that.

“I am sorry for what is happening, but we cannot help.”

Ivanta wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She took the response letter and began tearing it. She tore it in half and half and half, and turned it into tatters in her hand. She then threw them out of the castle balcony and watched as the pieces of paper fell to the ground.

Some of them flew away, others fell down and hit the ground. Those pieces of papers would be stuck there until a breeze could pick them up. Ivanta felt like those papers. She wanted to be like the papers which had been picked up by the wind. They weren’t completely free, but they were at least going away, hopefully to a place where men like Hassai aren’t considered great.