Ginzōji’s Path had once felt tediously long along the mercantile stretch and claustrophobic among its overwhelming numbers of tiny stalls. Now only the dead filled the route to the residence of the Daimyō, with the silhouettes of their killers dancing in the distant streets. The journey felt far shorter than it had the day before.
Their destination came into sight within a matter of minutes. At its forefront, several shapes moved through the persisting veil of snow. The bleak downfall was softer beneath the cover of the town’s highest layer, though was still thick enough for a stealthy approach. Fuu pressed on ahead of the group, her footsteps landing silently on the thin powdery carpet.
They were five. One woman, three men, one boy. All had been assigned a common task and all partook unquestionably in their duty. Stiff, half-frozen corpses crowded the path of Ginzōji. Whomever these survivors were, citizens of Keisato or reavers of Won, their objective was clear: to expunge the dead from the ravine town.
“There’s a heavy one here. Help me, Tugi,” the smallest man called out to the young boy. Judging from their identical shaggy black manes and widely spaced eyes, the two were father and son. Tugi emerged from behind his father’s legs where had been watching the shifting of bodies with morbid curiosity. Casting aside his uncertainty, the boy fastened his grip around the ankles of an obese stallholder. The front of the deceased man’s seasonal garb was thick with a sickening yellow-brown substance that had once been a large curried breakfast of fish and rice, all now mixed with the remains of a dissolved stomach. Tugi gagged at the smell and retched at the sight yet somehow still managed to retain his last meal. Slipping his hands under the arms of the corpse, Tugi’s father gave the order to haul. The two struggled briefly with the bulbous body before gravity took its hold and the stallholder plunged into the sightless chasm. Tugi observed its disappearance with an uneasy stare.
“You did well,” his father smiled, shaking the boy’s shoulder. Another body rolled into the watery depths at the hands of a man and woman as Fuu pressed closer. She approached without concern; the situation had changed.
“Greetings to you all,” Fuu called out, her voice devoid of any warmth. Nervous eyes snapped in her direction. “It seems that I am interrupting some important business. Tell me where we can find Esengei Möngke and we shall move swiftly on.”
There was an exchange of glances between the five would-be undertakers before Fuu received a response. It was the largest of the men, as tall as he was wide, that spoke in turn.
“Möngke’s talking diplomacy with the Daimyō. They’re deciding the future of Keisato.”
“Diplomacy?” Fuu laughed. “This is what you Won savages call diplomacy? Are the minds of the rivermen so seared by tropical heat that you cannot see the atrocity before you?”
“Careful, girl. Survivors are to be rounded up and bound, but we were never told to deliver you unharmed. Wukan will need an army to survive the years ahead of us, and for that, we need to build our population. Your body is your best asset, warm and… fertile.” The large man’s face was split by a hungry grin. “Promise I won’t break anything. If you cooperate, that is.” Like a squirming earthworm, Fuu’s stomach twisted into a spiral of sickness and hate. Her welling animosity was a feeling she was not yet used to. Yu had a look of murder burning within his eyes, but Kana moved quickly to halt him.
Sio stepped in calmly, “That will all be quite unnecessary. We have a message of great importance for your leader and any harm inflicted upon us will undoubtedly be reflected onto whoever is foolish enough to try. Surely a futile attempt at the Jishu’s forgone maidenhood isn’t worth losing your life.”
Sio’s provocation elicited a faltering smile. “Isn’t it?” he replied warningly.
“Not at the hands of a host of Heaven,” she answered. The fanciful pretence had dropped from her voice and allowed its aggravated harshness to seep through. “Get out of the way.”
Scoffing in disgust, the man shook his head and returned his attention to the corpse at his feet, “Doesn’t matter to me what you do. Möngke can take care of himself better than anyone else here, you should really reconsider if you plan to try anything stupid. Even if you are a host as you say, he still wields the power of the Ancestral Sigil.”
“Thank you for the unwarranted advice,” Fuu smiled spitefully. She found her eyes fixed upon the man’s wide back as she passed him, her hostile thoughts accompanied by a deep, animalistic yearning to harm. He was mere inches away from the edge of Ginzōji’s Path, it would take only a firm push to send him hurtling to a grim, watery end in the concealed abyss below. Her fingers twitched at the prospect. She released a long breath of air. Inhaling, she released another. The temptation was buried within her mind, bringing Fuu shame for its very existence.
A certain measure of eagerness quickened Sio’s footsteps as she led the way into Daimyō Inutani’s home. Across the walls, intricate floral designs were intertwined with twisting eels that watched fiercely from their hand painted murals. Silence greeted them in the commodious anteroom. A brief search of the vacant hallways and obsessively maintained upper rooms brought the group no closer to uncovering the whereabouts of the contested Lords. At the end of the hallway, the room adjacent to Daimyō Inutani’s study was the last to be investigated. A brief scan of the bile-soaked flooring was enough for Fuu to swiftly retreat into the hallway once more.
“Is something wrong?” Yu asked.
Fuu closed the door behind her gently, “I found Lord Inutani’s assistant.”
“Was she-?”
“Yes. Yes, she was dead.” Fuu tried to avoid shutting her eyes lest the room’s sights infest her imagination. Judging from the stains, Minami had thrown up on her bed to begin with, waking into a nightmare of nausea and vertigo. A shattered cup lay at her bedside along with the first hint of internal bleeding, a red patch that had marked the tatami mats. A spotted trail led to a bowl in the corner of the room that was filled to the brim with a film-covered carmine soup of what could only have consisted of dissolved internal organs. Her final throes had taken place several feet away to where she had been driven by a feeling of instinctual panic and terror, so told the desolate expression on her blue lips. In what could not have been more than a few minutes of fearful agony, perhaps the coming of death in her final moments was a welcome mercy. “Dead and gone now,” Fuu finished.
Searching the lower rooms was equally as fruitless, peering through shōji after shōji until finally arriving at the building’s rear entrance. It was through those ribbed double doors that their search came to an end.
The heated bath of the Daimyō lay immediately to the rear of his home, it was built of polished marble and overlooked the town’s lower layers as well as the snowy chasm below. Two men occupied the bath at either side, each clothless, each sitting without a word. A web of raised veins and arteries were spread across Lord Inutani’s reddened skin. He regarded his companion with a tempestuous rage, yet moved not an inch.
At the other side of the bath was a man staring calmly into the surface of the heated water. As if tracing unusual shapes, he followed the shifting wisps of steam with a finger in a state of contented fixation. Fuu could not discern whether he followed their path of expansion or created them.
“Esengei,” Fuu called. When she received no reply from the unwavering man, she called out once again, “Do you not answer when spoken to?”
The man turned slightly to see the Jishu growing in vexation. His head sported locks of dark, damp hair that stopped short of the tattooed mark upon his neck. Several golden piercings adorned his left ear, and a selection of silver pierced his right. His sharply shaven facial hair deformed as he pulled his lips to the side and pondered the question for a moment before expending the effort to reply.
“I do,” he stated bluntly. Fuu’s glare seemed to spur him on further for an answer, though his tone suggested a feeling of reluctance. “Addressing someone by name is not conversing with them. Information was not given or requested. There was no obligation for me to reply,” he continued, clearly growing tired of the confrontation.
“Is this any time to play a game of semantics? You are aware of what is happening here, are you not?”
“I ordered what is happening here. Of course I’m aware.”
“What could be so coveted to be worth the lives of an entire town?”
“The entire town,” Esengei answered. “Is there a point to your being here? I’m busy taking care of the Daimyō.”
“He looks closer to death than life.”
“And why shouldn’t he be? Alt ükhel is no gentle toxin. Daimyō Inutani would already be dead had I not brought him into this scalding heat.”
“The weight of your actions have not yet registered, have they? After all, if this was what you wanted, you must be possessed by the psyche of a deranged sociopath,” Fuu accused. Her body was flush with a raging heat that was only heightened by the warm ambience of the Daimyō’s bath. Snow continued to fall as a torrent outside of the wooden shelter, yet the damp sensation of beading sweat upon Fuu’s forehead was unmistakable. Clenching her jaw and fists was the greatest effort she could make to maintain her faltering composure. Out from behind the Jishu stepped Sio, the usual expression of amusement falsely plastered on her face.
“I have to say, I’m curious about your methods. You put an entire town to death and still spared their leader. Any reason why?” she asked innocently. Esengei gazed blankly at the host.
“Have we met? There’s something familiar about the both of you that I can’t quite place.”
“We have now,” Sio replied. “I am a host of Heaven. That mark upon your neck recognises me even if you do not.”
“A host,” he echoed in wonderment. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss...?”
“Sio Ko. Guiding those with the Mandate is my purpose, Lord Möngke, the pleasure is all mine.”
“And your companions?” Esengei returned his attention to Fuu with a measuring stare.
“Behind me stands Yu Diao and my shinobi, Yukio Kanamori. The woman you’ve already spoken to is the daughter of the Daishun, Jishu Fuu Jie,” Sio answered. The moment she had finished, Esengei readjusted himself to fully face his four visitors.
“Well isn’t that something,” he murmured. “It doesn’t really matter whether that’s an unlikely truth or a shameless lie. I’ll answer your questions for now, but when the time comes, you’ll leave this town- willingly or otherwise. This is no place for strangers. Keisato is our home now. Do you understand?”
Sio responded in agreement, her facade not wavering for an instant.
A grateful smile spread across Esengei’s lips. “Thank you. As for your curiosity about the Daimyō, I want him alive so he can explain how it came to be that my brother was thrown to his death at the bottom of Keisato’s chasm. Until yesterday, he was living a careful life under the supposed protection of Seiichi Inutani whilst providing me with information in preparation for our coming attack. The next report I received was that a young girl had cut him down and thrown him to the depths below.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Not as sorry as I. Not as sorry as Daimyō Inutani, either. I’ve made sure of that.”
“It isn’t the Daimyō that I’m particularly interested in, Lord Möngke, I'm here because I'm led to believe that you're the best informed on the fate of a man named Sukh Mengu. Someone of your description was seen fleeing the site of his most recent battle, after all.”
Esengei frowned, “Were they? Is that right? Are there any more tales you'd like to tell of me?”
“No. I'd like you to tell me what happened to Chieftain Mengu, and then I’d like to offer you my help.”
“Sukh Mengu is dead, Miss Ko. He met a fate anyone could have expected from such a meaningless campaign. The man pissed his pants after Temür Khara split open his beloved Sky-Chosen and filled his dying body with hot coals like some sort of human boodog. Sukh the master strategist, a true tactical genius of our times, then led an army of bygones and broken men against the strongest military leader in recorded history. Khara’s Mandate of Heaven devastated Mengu’s forces before the invaders had even entered the Verdant Cradle. Those that didn’t run quickly enough were either run down by cavalry or ravaged by Khara's war beasts. From what I’ve heard, the bastard didn’t even allow passage for consecrators to burn the bodies. The entire Salbaruud region could already be buried beneath the shores of Xia’an.”
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“And from that battlefield, you fled here?” Sio asked.
“Use whichever words you like,” Esengei replied, curling his lip. “I did everything I could to save as many lives as I could. As did my brother. The same brother that was dashed against the rocky base of this ravine only yesterday.”
“Do you seriously mean to tell me that you poisoned this town’s water supply and melted the organs of thousands of innocents for the sake of avenging your brother? Is that the justice of the Sky-Chosen?” Fuu blurted out in anger.
“I am no Sky-Chosen!” he roared. “The Sky-Chosen reigns from Raane in the Verdant Cradle of Won, and as far as I can see, we are not in Won. I need no title to lead our new State of Wukan.”
“Your new state,” Fuu sneered. “Han, Sen, Won, Jinha, and now Wukan. Are there any more nations we should be aware of? Though, I must admit that it is difficult to refer to a band of merciless killers trapped in a ravine as a nation. You and all your miserable followers will be crushed as you fester, you disgusting, malign growth.”
At the sound of the final word, the proclaimed Lord of Wukan rose to the Jishu’s challenge. Bathwater evaporated in twisting tendrils of steam from his unblemished skin as he climbed onto the marble flooring. There was no shame in his expression at his muscular nakedness, even under the pressing gaze of the others. A small towel was obtained from the bathside and wrapped around his waist that scarcely covered his manhood and rear.
“Would you presume to destroy what we have created here?” he asked carefully. While waiting for the answer, he donned a beautifully exquisite necklace of shining gold. Several small decorational arrowheads hung from its fine chain, each pitted with a line of narrow holes.
“By myself? No,” Fuu gave her reply. “If Sio’s strength is not great enough to purge your kind from this chasm in the cliffs, you can be certain that Emperor Naga will return to flush you out.”
“I find myself no longer interested in your identities, Jie, Diao, Kanamori and Ko, since you’re so insistent on a fight. That being said, I won’t have others telling tales about the man that fights unarmed women. If you’re certain about this, take the Daimyō’s swords and ready yourselves. There shall be no further generosity,” Esengei warned. He indicated with an open hand to the pair of swords that lay upon the dishevelled pile of clothing beside the bath. Fuu was loath to oblige the man’s offer, though could not turn down the opportunity to properly arm herself. She snatched the swords from their scabbards, one a short wakizashi and the other a longer katana, and after a sombre glance at Yu’s misshapen ribs, offered the latter to Sio. After accepting the weapon, the host regarded her with mild curiosity.
“I wonder, at what point along the line did you come to assume that I would join you in this fight? Surely my purpose here was made clear enough to understand that I will not raise a hand against Lord Möngke?”
“What? How can you possibly say-”
“Hush,” Sio interrupted in a gentle voice. “There is still a place waiting for you at Yu’s side on Keisato’s white shore. Choose to fight and that place shall cease to exist.”
Staggered, Fuu found herself at the pointed tip of the katana’s blade.
Yu thrust his arm in front of her. “Traitor. What of you?” he asked, meeting Kana’s carefree gaze. “Will you side with this murderous scum?”
“Don’t bring me into this,” he laughed nervously, raising his hands. “Whether you put a sword through Lady Sio or she offers you the same courtesy, I’ll still be a step closer to completing my mission.”
“Is that correct?” Yu replied. He returned his attention to Sio, “So what, are you going to cut us down in favour of your new friend?”
“Not likely,” Sio shrugged. Esengei ambled toward the two with an expression that mirrored that of the servant’s, and upon reaching them was handed the Daimyō’s sword. He stood and shook his head in puzzlement at the jade woman before advancing upon his opponent. From behind Yu, Fuu held her short sword at an arm’s length.
“Is this what you want?” asked Esengei. His grip upon the sword’s handle was loose, his posture open and clement. “You can still leave if you wish.”
“If I leave now, what would have been the point in coming here?” Fuu replied.
“What was the point in you coming here? To feel as though you contributed something? I can see in your eyes that you don’t want me dead.”
“Do not presume to tell me what I want. There is nothing more I would like than to see you bloodied and burned for what you have done here. So many lives lost in such a deplorable, despicable manner, and for what? There are bodies of young children here, bodies of mothers and growing men.”
“The people that followed me here have children too. There are newborns and toddlers, adolescents and adults, elders and the ailing. I’ve given all of my efforts to turning that group of scattered, starving wartime wanderers into a well-knit, well-fed company of survivors. Now they have all of Keisato to call their home.”
“But you could have chosen anywhere, built anything, there was never a need to bring such an atrocity upon the world,” Fuu insisted.
“And instead become the victim of another’s raid? These people fled the civil war in Won and found themselves in the Land of Scorching Earth. They have no allies here, none that would bat an eyelid at their suffering solely because of their nationality. We could not settle in Won for the fear of the new Sky-Chosen, nor could we settle in Sen under the threat of enemy attacks and the armies of their war-hungry Emperor. Tell me, Jishu Jie, why should I be more considerate of an enemy that would sooner see us fall than prosper than I am for the people that depend on me to build their futures? Should I have left them to die? Should I have forgiven those who flayed their brothers and sisters and mounted them on display to freeze? Those that watched on as my own brother was thrown to a watery death in the dark?” Esengei demanded. His tone remained soft, though the agitation was audible in his final words.
“You chose yourself at the cost of everyone else.”
“That I did,” he agreed, “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“I should cut you down here, tear you and everything you have built to the ground.”
“Which would only achieve a second slaughter and another pit of corpses to accompany the first- assuming you could even manage such a thing. If you’re so sure about fighting me, then why not try it?”
“Why not, indeed. Shall we?” Fuu drawled, slipping ahead of Yu. She refused to hear his protests. With the wakizashi in hand and her body poised to strike, she pushed forward with explosive speed. The two blades collided in a flash of brilliant sparks.
“Then whatever happens from here on out is your own responsibility,” Esengei assured with a hardened brow. As stern as his voice and expression was, his grip remained loosely relaxed. Even his posture was soft and limber. Fuu forced her way toward him armed with a tactical certainty- she was being underestimated. Such a lax stance was proof enough for her theory, and was also the key to her victory. Using a fast enough attack, it would be impossible to parry from a position of passivity. Sidestepping around him, Fuu moved to drive the tip of her short sword swiftly upward into his gut. The strike did not connect. Wielding the larger weapon as if it were a stick of bamboo, Esengei knocked her blade aside and switched into a counterattack in a single fluid motion. Like flowing water, his arms moved efficiently, without resistance, allowing his katana’s razor edge to slice through the air in search of her neck’s vital flesh. Fuu’s momentum still held her off-balance. Ever closer came the blade’s deathly bite.
The Jishu was well at ease despite her momentary desperation. Closing her eyes, she clutched at her chest and flushed her mind of all thoughts. One word echoed within the emptiness.
Redo. A sudden jolt shook the world.
“If you’re certain about-” Esengei stopped abruptly, looking with concern into the ravine at the building’s supports. “What...?”
“What?” Fuu asked breathily. Avoiding notice, she once again retrieved the two swords from atop the Daimyō’s clothing. Placing the katana into Yu's eager hands, her eyes met sharply with Sio’s peculiar emerald gaze. She would not make the mistake of granting her enemy the means to defeat her twice.
“A brief shudder in the woodwork or… something else. You did this, didn’t you?”
Fuu smirked and tugged at the neck of her dress to reveal the dispersing strokes of her tattoo.
Esengei rested both hands atop his head. “Another Mandate of Heaven?”
“It is exactly that. This is the end.”
“Don’t delude yourself, Jishu Jie, we haven’t even started yet. Now you’ve shown me yours, it’d be rude not to return the gesture.”
The man arched his head upwards to expose the mark upon his throat. Satisfied with their empty reply, he turned his back upon them. “And this… is Divergence.” Those words were much quieter, and as he lifted his arms into the air, so too became the world around them.
Silence and stillness replaced the rushing of water from either side of the ravine. It replaced the distant crash of the chasm’s waves, and when nothing could be heard save for the slight pattering of snowflakes atop the bathing room, there came a moment when even that faded into nonexistence. Fuu looked upon the watery deluge as it halted mid-flight, suspended in time and space, a freak cessation of gravity’s natural order. Then, they began to rise. The rivers within the abyss below erupted into slow-seeping geysers that burst and fed into rising walls of water, scaling each side of the ravine at an impossible speed. Subtle patches of damp began to freeze and leap toward the white sky, falling in reverse.
It was only the slightest brush against her lover’s skin that spurred Yu into action. He jolted at her touch, instinctively protecting her with his body. With a deft flick of his wrist, he slipped a dagger into his free hand and flung it across the bathing room, a deadly missile slicing toward the base of Esengei’s skull. The Lord of Wukan twisted his head- a small increment, just enough to look upon his enemies from the corner of his eye, and just enough to cull the knife’s trajectory. It slowed to a halt and, just as they had witnessed with the waterfalls, began to change direction. The dagger flew fast- much faster than before, and crossing his arms ahead of him was all Yu could do to stop its blade from piercing his chest. He winced as the steel buried itself in his forearm.
“I go to the effort of putting on a show for you, and this is how I’m repaid?” Esengei asked testily. “Come then, whichever of you wishes to die. Measure yourself against the power of Heaven.”
Yu wrenched the dagger from his arm and took a step forward. The katana trembled in his hand.
Fuu grabbed his wrist, “Do not dare to leave me behind again. If we are to fight then we shall fight him together, side by side. Do you hear me, Yu? This is a struggle we must share.”
Her words did not seem to reach him, though neither did he take another step toward their enemy. Fuu circled him, and it was then that she saw the look upon his face.
Agony. Confusion. Terror. When his eyes met her own, those emotions were joined by despair. His eyes rolled and bulged and his teeth ground against one another as he fought to endure some unseen affliction, a battle that concluded near instantaneously. One hand went to his chest, the other to his throat, but neither could stem the crimson rush that escaped his mouth. His legs gave out, and so Fuu took him in her arms. His head slumped back, and so Fuu raised a hand to support it. His jaw snapped shut amid a terrible spasm, and so Fuu opened her own.
“Redo!” she yelled and the world around her shuddered, but Yu’s previous breath had been his last, and there was nothing left that Fuu could do.
Mere moments had passed since Yu Diao had risen to the Lord of Wukan's challenge. Now the servant's growingly pale body was limp and spotted with his lifeblood. Words were coming out of Esengei's mouth, brash and curious, and each of them wholly ignored. He wandered casually toward her. She scrambled backwards and seized Inutani’s swords once more.
“What did… why…?” she stuttered.
“If I had to guess… I’d say his heart has been broken, quite literally. By reversing the flow of arterial blood, the heart becomes overfilled, and so ruptures. An easy kill, and one that I’ve relied on before, though his pain would have been unbearable.”
“Your tongue, Möngke,” Fuu breathed.
Esengei tilted his head, “My tongue? What about it?”
“I shall gouge it from your foul mouth,” she replied, “Even if I have to cut through Sio to do it.”
“Will you? How do you intend to do that?”
Fuu crossed both swords in a defensive stance.
Esengei smirked, “I see. Come then. Show me your resolve.”
Fuu charged. Even as she continued to swing and thrust, she knew that it was a pathetic, fruitless struggle. She felt no surprise when her attacks were evaded, nor when her arm was twisted and the katana snatched from her grip. Esengei struck out; Fuu parried with an open palm. A minor adjustment in his swing sliced through flesh and bone, separating several fingers from the Jishu’s right hand. Her scream was returned by the depths of the ravine.
Their swords flashed in an exchange of steel flurries. Fuu fell into a slow, backwards retreat under the force of his limber yet forceful strikes. Each attack was unpredictable until the final moment before landing and not a single one left the Jishu’s skin unscathed; she became ridden with countless nicks and gashes that trickled ceaselessly. Fuu moved to deflect his final downward swing, freezing when the lax attack changed course into an instantaneous diagonal slice across her abdomen. Neither her jacket nor dress offered any resistance against the blade’s keen edge.
“Redo!” she cried, but not before his katana had opened a laceration from armpit to navel. Her stomach spasmed as time and space shook violently back to its previous state. Pieces returned to their places in an instant, the swords to their pile, and Esengei to the bath’s rim. Fuu’s wounds burned as if trying to repair themselves, but as soon as events began to replay, she gasped and doubled over in pain. A puddle of blood spilled out onto the wooden decking beneath her.
“Trying for a second chance? How has that worked out?” Esengei asked. The taunt was clear, though there was no real hostility behind his words. “An ability to alter time, or at the very least the memory of it, but your body doesn’t seem to be part of the equation. Not in that state, at least. That doesn’t sound very useful. Is there not more to it?”
The Jishu could not reply. It took all of the willpower she could muster to hold back her unsightly whines and whimpers. Her teeth clamped tightly, she raised her head to face Esengei once more.
“Well, I’m sure you’re dying to share those secrets with me, and I’d love to hear them, but I can’t have you trying anything more. I’ll remember this as the day we met and departed; the day that the eyes of Heaven fell upon me instead of you.”
A hand snatched Fuu’s wrist from beneath her with a vice-like grip. Between pained gasps and protests, her words did little to dissuade what Esengei had already decided upon. However smoothly the flooring had been polished, Fuu’s elbows and knees were still abraded and torn as she was dragged by the arm to the very edge of the building’s outer platform. She squirmed and flailed in the man’s steadfast grip with increasing desperation. A pleading look in the direction of Sio was met with only an inscrutable stare.
“I’m sorry for the pain that I have caused, though not for what I have done. I don’t act with the intention of an apology.” Esengei wiped the blood from her brow, where a particularly deep gash stung with an unbearable heat. “Farewell, Fuu Jie.”
A firm shove separated Fuu from the platform and threw her into a tumbling freefall. The disconcerting sensation of weightlessness seized her body. Outstretching beams and supports rushed up to meet her and pulled away as she continued her plunge into the sightless depths below. Fear ate away at her spirit, but an overwhelming tiredness diluted its ferocity. Her eyelids drooped and the sight of the snowy darkness receded. The Jishu did not feel the water’s icy embrace.