Ichika woke the next morning with her back pressed against the giant runestag, where it lay down facing out towards the front of the cave. As she stood up, she could see the smaller runedeer were arrayed around further inside the cave, the green sigils on their skin providing an ambient light.
She saw by the light that the cave was deeper than she had first imagined. It didn’t look constructed, however, just naturally deep. There wasn’t much visible further into the cave but there were some small crystal formations that seemed to reflect the light from the runedeer further into the cave. She was no stranger to being underground and was tempted to explore when her stomach reminded her that, magical land of wonder or not, she was still human.
Thankfully she had some traveling supplies in her backpack, so she grabbed that out now and started to chew on the dried meat and oat-cakes that she had packed. She remembered packing the bag for a week’s travel; she had been meant to leave her village to go traveling back to the Floating Dojo for the summer training session they ran for visitors.
She had to stop then as she ate and think about the night before. The wolves seemingly hadn’t caught up with them, maybe they had lost the scent. She had time now to process… the attack.
The Rustling Loam dojo is not one of the most famous in Misteria, partly because it shares more similarities with the fighting styles of other regions. Whereas people from Solana or Volcor might be dazzled by the flying, jumping and acrobatic wind-filled antics of students of the Floating Dojo. The Rustling Loam preached, preparedness, planning, and hitting your enemies hard enough they didn’t come back for more.
The armory was full of swords, shields, clubs, axes, hammers, spears, and a few bows for variety, but really before her adoption of the Shuriken, ranged weapons weren’t the preferred tool of choice for most students at the school. Bar one aged master of the bow, the majority of teachers specialized in the slower, heavier weapons. So it’s understandable to see why a blademaster from Solana might not think they have anything to learn, or why a brute that has triumphed over hundreds of its own kin might not be inspired by being told their hammer technique was flawed.
And yet, in Ichika’s opinion, they have – or had maybe she didn’t know how many were alive – no she couldn’t think like that, they have some special techniques and capabilities that put them on par with their peers from other nations.Their techniques and skill with specific weapons was hard to match, they also had other tricks they could use to combo with their main weapon, additionally, whereas some people preached about the ‘purity’ of a weapon and how it was ‘meant to be used’ their schools practiced the idea that any part of the weapon was a weapon.
Some snooty blade master from Solana might tell you to only hit someone with the tip of the sword, but a smack from the hilt of the blade or the shaft of a spear got the job done just as well sometimes.
They could also draw on their connections to the local earth and nature spirits to help imbue them with strength, nothing as powerful as the over the top display she had conjured yesterday, but dirt or stone adding some critical extra weight to an axe or hammer swing. Some arms being fortified at a critical moment with a blessing of strength. It was not uncommon for a perfectly mundane hammer swing to lull an opponent into a false sense of security, only for the subsequent swings to hit twice as hard. Or for an opponent to see a spot in a fighter’s defense and go for it, only to feel their blade deflected by stone at the last minute. Those were the blessings her tribe had gained through years of negotiation and training with their local earth spirits.
The Dojo itself was situated in a valley with tall mountains on either side. The majority of the village attached to the dojo was by a river that ran through the heart of the valley, and the dojo itself was tucked up against the largest of the mountains. The only way to the Dojo was through the village, normally this was a good thing, the village could host gatherings and welcome travelers before showing them to the dojo, but that had turned against them in the end.
Ichika wasn’t sure when they had first attacked, but it was probably around early evening. The light was starting to fade and she was walking back up the valley from the Dojo with the students of the dojo none of whom lived in the dojo itself. Her friend, Mika had been making a joke, something lewd about things a fisherman could do with two fish. The day had felt completely normal, they said goodbye to their master, and closed up the small dojo that they used, and began to head home.
As they neared the village, they began to hear the screams and sounds of clashing steel. They immediately drew whatever weapons they carried, though some only had wooden training weapons and began to accelerate to get closer to the village. Being well trained they stopped on the edge of the forest so they could see what was going on without exposing themselves, and stood well inside the tree line looking out.
The sight had paralyzed her with fear for a moment before her training kicked in. There were black clothed figures with red armbands chasing people through the village and fighting with the guard. Several people were already injured and there were a few bundles of rags unmoving on the ground. They were too far away to see exactly who it was, but Ichika could hear some of the students with her stifling gasps as they saw what might be familiar colors on the ground.
They all wanted to rush forward, some of the older students were holding younger ones back. She was one of the older students, being 19 and some of them were already looking to her for guidance.
“Keep quiet,” she whispered, “Remember your training, we find out where there is resistance and help them rather than rushing in.”
“You!” and she pointed to one of the younger students, but he was 12 and old enough to be serious when needed. “Get the youngest and take them back to the dojo, tell the master’s what is happening if they don’t already know.” The boy nodded and froze for a moment taking one look back at the village.
“Don’t worry, we will help your family too!”
“Of course, please do what you can.” and at that he started gathering up the younger students who didn’t want to go, they were all worried about their families too.Still this wasn’t optional so all the older students picked them up and got them moving before turning their attention back to the village.
Mika wasn’t joking now, she was scanning the fighting and like all of them wondering where to intervene.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“Remember what they taught us in these situations, find a big fighting group and help them break free so they can spread out. Can you see where that is?”
“I can’t see it from here, but maybe at the headman’s house?”
“That would make sense, let’s try and get a better look”.
It was hard, there were people they could see fighting right now, people they could help if they ran straight in, but this was where training overtook instinct.
They kept within the treeline and edged closer to the river; the headman’s house was a big square building with a thatched roof that faced out onto the water, and also served as the dock and part of the town’s warehouse.
As predicted they could hear the clash of weapons coming from outside, and saw the town’s warriors had made a choke point where it was harder to push against them. However, in doing so they had also trapped themselves in and were unable to gain ground or get out to help others.
She also saw some of the black clothed figures sneaking around to come at the building through the river side entrance. The defender’s didn’t know it but soon they would be flanked.
She looked around, she had about 20 students left with her, and there were at least 30 if not 40 black-clothed warriors around the front of the headman’s house.
She gathered everyone around.
“Look, I know it seems bad, but it’s actually straight forward. We get in there, we distract and disrupt them, and then our warriors can get out past the barricade and help us.”
Everyone, even Mika looked scared, when she was normally the first to lighten a situation.
“What’s our strategy? Mika, Oben, what do you think?” She gestured to her friend and to another 16 year old boy who stood near the back of the group. Everyone knew him though and made way for him to stand at the front. He wasn’t the strongest or the best fighter but he was the one the teacher’s said had the best grasp of strategy and regularly beat the masters in Chess.He wouldn’t have come forward himself, but now he straightened his back and stood up straighter.
Ichika knew she’d made the right choice as he started speaking.
“Look, we have had training but we don’t have a lot of combat experience. So the best thing to do is to keep it simple, we will sneak as close as we can in small groups without getting spotted, and then we will go in. Spears go in first, keep people at bay, while our few ranged weapons take some initial shots and our hammers and axes get into place.” He gestured at Ichika, Mika who had a bow, and two others who also readied their bows, and then pointed to a group of 4 boys and 2 girls standing at the back who all had heavy two handed warhammers at their feet.
“When the hammers are in place, the spears push forwards, and then split to the sides and the hammers will go through them. Then the spears can keep stabbing while the hammers engage. Ranged switch to the targets further at the back, and we move that way”.
He gave them a weak grin then.
“Remember, things will go wrong, plans never work, but we will go together and see what happens”. At that Ichika slapped him on the back, “Perfect! I knew you’d have an idea, you’ll be a leader here soon”. This statement was met with many nodding heads and some grins, and the students looked like they had gained some confidence from that short plan. Some even looked… excited. Ichika herself even had to admit she was a bit excited. She had practiced for years, and even fought in some minor skirmishes after she turned 16, but that was always with the older soldiers providing support and keeping them away from the worst of the fighting. This was a chance to put many things into practice, to prove themselves, and save the people they cared about.
Oben started splitting them up into groups after that. He worked quickly and soon there were 4 distinct groups with a mix of weapons in each. Mika was in a different group, and Ichika gave her friend one last look before they began. The village was a working farm, and the land near the stream was active farmland and well-irritated. This meant that there were sheds, piles of compost, and plenty of places to hide along the route into the village. Though they also had to spend a lot of time crawling on their belly through the fields wishing at that moment that they weren’t so well-irrigated.
Still their prey was distracted and they managed to get to the far wall of the field, and all they needed to do was jump over and they would be in the fight. Ichika saw everyone take a deep breath, and then Oben made a hand motion like pumping his fist and the spear wielders were boosted over the low wall at a jump by their friends and ran forwards, spears lowered.
They took the enemy by surprise and the spears hit the closest attackers with a charge and cut the first few down. While they did this, the rest of the students climbed the wall and began to form up.
The spears were doing their job but they were hard pressed against the numbers they had run towards. So they started to fall back. Ichika cried out briefly as one of the retreating spear students, Aoi was his name, caught a sword blow that cut through his spear and his arm. He fell to the ground, but the other 7 managed to retreat and form a line.
She couldn’t see the faces of the attackers as they were covered by red tiger masks, but she imagined she could see their shock turn to something more evil as they realized the charging attackers weren’t adults but rather younger students. She saw one, the one that had cut off start to arrogantly walk forward with his sword lowered, and laughed through the mask as the spears waved frantically to keep him back.
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The laugh caught in his through though, just as one of Ichika’s shuriken caught him there as well. This made all the enemy take a step back, they likely hadn’t expected ranged weapons due to the Dojo’s reputation as a melee focused school.
They were a bit warrior, but still they came, so the hammer wielders rushed forwards and joined the spears while Ichika, Mika, and the other two bow users tried to pick out targets in the melee. It was hard, especially as their own friends closed into close range with the enemy, but there were stragglers and outliers that they could try and pick off.
They were good students, but used to practice dummies, and these were living targets, so unfortunately, more arrows and shuriken went into the ground than the enemy, for the first few shots.
“Calm down, we don’t have many arrows at all. So take your time and line your shots”. Mika called to the other two. She had always helped them in practice as the senior bow-student.
“You too Ichika, I bet you have what 5 or six on you”.
“10 actually!”
Still Mika was right and they all slowed down and began to make much more precise shots, actually taking down fighters or at least hitting an arm or a leg enough to weaken them.
The spears and the hammers were fully engaged now, with things going roughly as Oben had said. The hammers were blocking with metal guards on the shaft of their weapons and doing slow swings at vulnerable targets, while the spears guarded them from rapid darting attacks and kept people at a distance that the hammers could still do their work.
It was now that the attackers saw some of the techniques that this dojo was famous for, although the students had only mastered lighter versions of them. However, when someone tried to deflect a spear stab or knock the tip of the spear away, they found even the teenage arms had a solidity to them that was hard to beat.The hammer swings, not every single one, but many one in four, came on harder than you would expect. Some of the enemy had light shields, and they tried to block the first few hammer swings, but after the first few shields splintered and broke the arms underneath they abandoned that tactic.
The plan was working, but they were still outnumbered. It was also not a flawless plan, or rather they were not flawless fighters and she saw some of her fellows get cut, and a few of them even go down. One side of the line briefly collapsed and 3 of the students went down under a flurry of stabbing from the short blades of their attackers, before Oben, yelling from the rear could tell the others to push them back. They claimed two more of the enemy with spears and hammer when they reformed the line but it couldn’t save the three students who were now in pieces on the ground.
That’s when Ichika realized that while this part of the plan was working. They had formed a line and were splitting the enemy’s forces from attacking the headman’s house. They had also underestimated the amount of the enemy, the fact is, there were too many enemies between them and the barricade so the rest of the warriors inside couldn’t see that there was even a rescue attempt.
They had to do something, because all they were doing was distracting and holding. There were plenty of enemies that hadn’t turned to fight them yet, and eventually they would decide to overwhelm or flank her smaller band.
What could she do? What sort of signal could they give? She looked around, and at what she had available and then a thought came to her. She took her sleeve which was covered in the colors of the village – green, brown with hints of gold and silver – and took her dagger and cut her a square of her sleeve off.
Then she ran to Mika.
“Mika, they aren’t coming, look they don’t know we are here.” Mika nodded quickly, she had noticed as well.
“Yeah so what do we do?”
“Do you think you can get an arrow that far with this on?” and Ichika then tied the strip of cloth as flat around the shaft of the arrow as she could, hoping it didn’t ruin the flight of the arrow too much.
“Yeah maybe, well, we have to try. Though we need to get closer if this is going to work”.
The two of them quickly explained to their friends, who were almost out of arrows now, and then ran forward to get a good vantage point.
Thankfully on this side of the village there weren’t many physical obstacles, it was just the number of people in front of the hastily made barricade that were making it difficult.
Still it was a pretty clean shot, if Mika could just get the arrow high enough over the barricade the signal would be pretty clear.
She lined up the shot, yet just as she was about to fire both of them heard a scream from behind them.
The enemy fighters who had been trying to sneak into the headman’s house through the stream entrance had witnessed the attack and come back around. They had used the student’s own sneaking approach through the fields against them, and the wall from the fields was exactly where the other archers had been.
One of the girls, Yui, was now lying on the floor, and the other, Hina, was trapped against the wall using her blow to fend off attacks from her two attackers.
“I’ll go, you shoot!” Ichika yelled at Mika.
She saw Mika lining up the shot again as she turned and ran back to help Hina and Yui, if there was anything left to do for the girl. The other archer was unsuccessfully keeping her two enemies at bay but they were toying with her, and she already had several slashes through her clothes on her arms and legs. Thankfully they were enjoying themselves so much they didn’t notice as Ichika put the last of her shuriken into the back of the first fighter. Then she drew her blade and ran forwards, and put herself between Hina and the attacker.
He was more skilled with a blade, but he was also injured. She hadn’t caused it but something was wrong with one of his feet and he couldn’t seem to put weight on it. She used that to her advantage, attacking him from the other side and forcing him to retreat in odd ways.
Still he caught her on the arm and felt a line of fire go across her forearm as his dagger cut through skin. Not too deeply though, she could still grip her own dagger. She pressed the attack and watched him go off balance again, but he was clearly experienced at fighting while wounded so he was soon coming back at her again.
He pushed her back, and advanced menacingly, flexing his grip on his sword, then he came even closer, and a large piece of wood – a bow, came down over the back of his head and knocked him off balance. He fell forwards and it was all Ichika could do to push his dagger away from her, yet as he fell he also fell on her outstretched dagger pushed up by the angle of his fall. She felt it slide sickeningly under his rips and towards his heart and felt him shudder and go limp against her. His dagger fell to the ground with a clatter as she pushed him off her.
Hina was standing above her, and gave her a hand to help her up. Despite pushing him off straight away, she was already covered in a lot of his blood, but thankfully less of her own. She took the rest of her ruined sleeve and tore it off and then tied it around her cut arm.
Then she looked at Hina and they both dragged the body of the attacker away from Yui’s. Though as they did that they saw Yui shudder and move. Hina knelt down to look at her.
“She’s still cut deep, and also took a hit to the head but maybe she will be okay. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on her.” Ichika nodded and lifted up the attacker’s dagger and handed it to the girl.
“Just in case, let them think you are unarmed until they get close and then try and attack them that way”. Hina nodded and Ichika knelt quickly to retrieve her shuriken and then went back to rejoin the fight.
She could see as she went back towards the fighting, that her plan had worked and the warriors of her village were now pressing out beyond their barricades and fighting the enemy on two fronts. But despite this, things were still not going well for the students.
The enemy had, perhaps rightly, decided that the easiest way to stop fighting on two fronts was to deal with the less experienced and well armed group first, and the majority of the force was now pushing the students back towards the edge of the village’s row of houses and aiming to trap them between houses and fences that blocked off other fields.
There was nothing the adults could do now, even though they could see and were frantically trying to push through to help the students, many of whom were relatives of those that had been trapped inside.
Ichika thought how she could help, and she had just climbed onto the roof of one of the buildings to maybe drop something down and help her friends when she felt the ground shake. She saw the enemy pause in momentary confusion, and she grinned. Maybe it had been their plan to get in and escape with some valuables before the master’s had come, or maybe they thought that a small dojo like the Rustling Loam was not that strong and could be beaten easily. If so, they hadn’t done their research, and they hadn’t met Kenji.
Kenji was the main master of the dojo and the main hammer instructor at the school. There were other lesser masters who trained bow and spear, but the hammer was the school’s signature weapon.
It was this that came now, and the local earth spirits quaked with excitement to see Kenji running at full speed into the village. From her vantage point she could see the ground almost throwing his feet back into the air with every step/jump that he took. He came on rapidly now, and with one mighty-ground assisted leap he jumped clean over the houses and landed on several enemies, right between the students and the oncoming forces.
Ichika continued to smile as things went from bad to worse for the attackers, though quite a few did try to fight Kenji as he swung at them with his hammer. Though they clearly thought he would be slow with the weapon, when instead it moved as if it was a feather in his hands. He blocked dagger and sword swings with it, and then countered with swings that broke legs (plural) and cracked skulls. Soon there was a cleared circle around him and a safe zone between the enemy and the students, but he didn’t stop there. He advanced, the very earth rising in his defense. Pillars of rock shot out from the ground when he stomped and sent the enemy forces flying. His hammer had gone from being a metal creation to being part stone, part dirt, but the added weight didn’t slow him down, it just meant that he was now wielding some giant maul that could smash enemies two or three at a time.
He quickly connected with the adult warriors and together they started to push the enemy towards the edge of the village, and then even further as they started to flee. Though not before Kenji called upon the earth again and made it open a hole underneath 3 of the enemy, which then closed around them, trapping them with only their heads sticking out.
Then it was over, warriors rushed around the village finishing off any remaining fighters and bringing the wounded to the main house. The dead were also gathered too, but only the friends who had died. The enemy would be gathered as well, no sense leaving dead bodies lying around, but they would be treated much worse.
Ichika didn’t stay for any of this though. She quickly climbed down, and made sure the other students, though much fewer in number than when they had started the fight, were as good as they could be. She also stopped to gather her Shuriken from a few of the fallen, since they were hard to get remade in this village and she might need them where she was going. Then she was off.
A few people called after her as she ran, some thanked her for her help, some told her to stop and that if she waited they would come with her because it wasn’t safe. But she couldn’t wait, through all this something had been at the back of her mind, her family didn’t live directly in the village, they had a farm land further up the valley. It was on a rise, with good slopes to build fields for rice, but close enough to the river that they could get water easily as well.
But it also lay in the direction the attackers had come from. It also lay directly in their path. Now they might have gone around it, they might have left it alone. It was one house, and stopping there might have given time for someone to see them and raise an alarm. She had to hope. Maybe her father, though he was a retired ninja himself, had been able to hold them off enough that they decided it wasn’t worth it for a small house.
Still as she got closer to the house, she knew none of this was true, she couldn’t hear any sounds. Not the sounds of her parents fixing something and bickering, not the sounds of her brothers chasing the chickens around the yard, or her little sister singing a song about the rain, nothing.
She almost stopped as she ran up the stairs, but she couldn’t now. She had to know. She slid open the door and fell to her knees. There lay her father, covered in multiple stab wounds, he had held the door for as long as he could. Behind him lay her her mother with a kitchen knife on the ground nearby where she had held it despite not being a fighter in a last desperate effort.
She couldn’t go further inside but she could see the small feet poking out from behind where her mother had fallen, and she couldn’t go any further. She had to leave. She had to get away. She grabbed the bag she had already prepared to leave on her journey to the other Dojo, and ran out into the night, to be anywhere but there.
Now maybe she should have stayed longer, if she had, she could have counted the bodies and realized that of her family of 5 only 4 lay dead in the building and her little sister was not there, but she didn’t. She ran.
She ran out into the night, not in the direction that the soldiers had come, she just had to be anywhere but here. She had to be as far away from the sight as she could be. So she ran on and on, into the heart of the forest, and deeper and deeper. She ran until she collapsed and found herself leaning against a worn stone in the middle of a dark glade in the depths of the forest, further into the valley than she had ever gone.
Her legs weren’t working anymore, but her brain was still screaming to be further away and keep running, and something listened. The worn stone she was leaning against lit up, and began to glow with a faint green light, and the earth spirits of that place passed on her cry and her plea to other spirits even farther away and something great, ancient and benevolent responded.
Then she had felt the world swirling around her and she felt cold, and hot, and damp at the same time. And then… And then I woke up to a weird forest being hunted by wolves she thought.
She hadn’t relished relieving that memory, but once she had started running through it in her mind she hadn’t been able to stop. Should she have gone to her family first? Were they already dead by the time the village had come under attack? Had they all been there? She hadn’t actually checked but one of them might have survived? Wasn’t her sister Niko supposed to be visiting friends that day?
She wished she had stopped to think more, rather than just running off, she wished she had gone back to find out why they had been attacked. Who were those crimson tiger masked warriors, and why had they come? So many questions but she had no idea how far she was from the answer.
So she sat there. At some point she had moved away from the Runestag who was now standing guarding the mouth of the cave. She now had her back against one of the great crystal formations in the cave. She sat there and cried, for her family, for wounded and dead friends, and for the distance between them now.
This continued until she heard the worst sound she could imagine at that moment, though not unexpected, the howling of faunawolves who had finally caught up.
She wiped her tears on her hand, and then made to get up, though just as she did the crystal she was leaning against moved, and a big soft tongue ran out and licked the tears off her hand.
She jumped straight up, and gazed back on where she had been sitting as the crystals she assumed were just a part of the rock began to move. Though none of the deer around her seemed scared or alarmed, had they known these other creatures lived here? And did that mean they were friendly. She quickly found out and soon she had this giant, round eyed, crystal lizard pushing its smooth head against the palm of her hand.
She breathed a sigh of relief, at least these animals were friendly, before she heard the sound of the faunawolves getting closer again and realized she needed to make a plan.