The great horn rang out in the air with an echoing cry and the locals fled to their tattered homes in routine urgency. Khan Sano’s oppressive curfew had been in place in Grey Wallow for many moons by this time and it had shown. Everyone was afraid. The Shadow could see it.
Mothers clutched their babes close to their breasts as they paced. Children ran from the gathering guardsman that donned crimson-plated armour and kabutos, and vagrants wandered aimlessly with no home to retreat to, expecting an inevitable beating. Those that were foolish enough to fight back were made a firm example of. One self-righteous resident took a rock and flung it at the morphing wall of red. He was swiftly detained and beaten in the middle of the marshy street for all remaining loiterers to bear witness.
The Shadow remained amongst the fleeing crowds, blending into the swarm of panic before turning into an empty alley. A jackalope gnawing on a small rodent twitched its antlered head in the Shadow’s direction and fled through the thickets. The Shadow ignored the creature and the smell of rotten, half-eaten meat as he ascended a bamboo ladder. From the rooftops, the condemned and frantic world that decayed below him became clearer. He knew where the guards patrolled, where the innocents fled towards and, most imperatively, the direction where his mark lay. The Shadow donned a zukin and fukumen as dark as night’s peak. A face did not befit a shadow.
The red twilight skyline draped the weary buildings in silhouettes. The Shadow was accompanied by his own kind as dark shades from the dwindling sun began to crawl across the rooftops. He observed the streets below where an unfortunate merchant who missed the curfew deadline was pulled away from his cart by his grey braided beard. The crimson guards watched the frail old man thrash in the mud before they dealt blows with iron batons.
The Shadow felt a queer feeling. There was something fierce boiling within him, yet he suppressed it. Emotions belonged to the man he once was. A man who died in New Jade City. The Shadow scattered towards the end of the rooftop’s eaves and leapt. Everything below him was far away and insignificant before landing on the adjacent rooftop.
He ran like the tiger he wished to become. He leapt, rolled, and flung himself from rooftop to rooftop in a way that was not quite human. His mark’s quarters were close. He gripped the hilt of his katana with rich enthusiasm. The hilt was smooth leather and felt comforting to grasp. He blocked away the sounds of the merchant’s cries for help that still echoed from in the distance behind him. He could have gone back. He should have gone back… But he was merely a shadow. The man who died in New Jade might have intervened… But not a shadow. Grey Wallow was not a worthy place for a shadow to die.
From across a dying garden buried under sheets of snow laid the mansion. It stood like an oppressive grey giant looking down upon its poverty-stricken people with distaste. Three stories high and with an archer situated at the end of every eave, the structure was more of a fortress. It mattered not to the Shadow. His path lay deep under the snow.
Twilight died before it had barely begun. Stars and darkness coated the sky, the distant flashes above watching the dying town below in a cosmic melancholia. The Shadow climbed down into the darkness of the backstreets, where he found two vagrants who had succumbed to the cold. The Shadow kicked away the feasting microraptors which created a small swarm of raven-black wings that twirled asunder and collectively shrieked a cry of injustice. He possessed little time to bury the bodies. Instead, he pulled open the sewer drain and descended into the tunnels.
He was not granted the privilege of torchlight. The dank walls felt sludgy, and he could hear soft moans echoing in the distance. He could not identify if they were human or animal. Each step felt uncertain, but the Shadow knew to follow the draft. The chill in the wind was the string that would lead him through the abyss.
Soon in the darkness, he felt the rust and decay of a deteriorated ladder. The Shadow had wondered if they were leading him to his death as some form of a cruel jape, but it had become clear that their intelligence was genuine. Perhaps he would become a tiger, yet.
The Shadow found himself in a wine cellar that had not been visited in some time; cobwebs dangled from the ceilings and dust had laid claim amongst the rows of untouched barrels. The Shadow morphed towards a nearby doorway which led into the kitchens. The Shadow smelt herbs, spices, and overwhelming scents of garlic as he glided past tenebrous shelves. Two cooks were talking amongst themselves as frantically as they chopped.
“Damn him,” one of them condemned. “No man deserves such a fate, no matter his intentions.”
“Unless you wish to join him next door, then I would guard your tongue,” the other cautioned as he dragged a curved blade down the stomach of a prongdeer carcass. “It is not our place to make judgements in the Shogun’s stead.”
Neither of the two men noticed the Shadow. He was blended in darkness, nothingness in the eyes of others. Even the man that had died in New Jade was used to that feeling. He drifted through the dark as silence followed him through the corridors. He searched the hallways with scant hope of finding the cook’s subject of discussion alive. They had told him that he was to end the mark cleanly and that would be the end of the sombre song yet as the Shadow approached the stairway something stopped his ascent. The moans of pain were as faint as the night-time whispers of ghosts, but the Shadow could still hear. The hallways were so devoid of sound that he could even hear the curve of the blade dragging against bare skin. The Shadow reached back to grip the cold leather hilt as the door to his left softly creaked back.
Near the candlelight, two startled eyes looked up at the Shadow in disbelief. The Inquisitor was bald barring one long thin braid that slithered down his back. He pulled the blade away from the fallen brother who he had tied to the wall. He held the blade towards the Shadow, yet his paling face revealed all. He was frightened. He was not used to his opponents not being restrained and cut up.
The Shadow withdrew his katana, ready for the strike. It was finally time to prove himself, to become an agent of darkness, to end the reign of monsters and become like the lightning tigers of old.
The Captive broke free from his ropes and pounced onto the Inquisitor. He took his blade and jammed it into the Inquisitor’s jaw to mitigate the screams. Blood gargled for a time before all that could be heard again were the flickering flames of the nearby fire. When the Captive arose, the Shadow could see that a tiger’s snarling face had been cut deep into his bare chest. It was a mockery on the Shogun’s part. A slight not just upon this fallen brother but towards the entire fraternity of Fangs.
“I failed her,” the freed man said as he fell to his knees. His face was teamed with sweat and blood. His hair was long and clamped together and he looked weary and ashamed. He turned the tip of the curved dagger in his direction and thrusted it.
The Shadow lunged forward, but before he could reach him, the blade had been embedded into the torso, dragged, and twisted. The Shadow caught the fallen brother in his arms and held him as life’s last light flickered away. He did not scream. He did not fight it. The Shadow was not even truly accepted into the Fraternity, and already a brother had died in his arms. When the breathing of the brother finally stopped, the Shadow laid him on the bloody floor and proceeded towards the stairway.
No guardsman stood outside Shogun Otomo’s quarters. There were no samurai to slash spears, no hounds to howl, and no watchers to chime bells for reinforcements. The Shadow found a woman in a black kimono slumped outside the Shogun’s doors with a needle in her arm. The Shadow loomed over her inquisitively; her eyes came alive through the dark, parted locks of hair. What could have been a once enchanted gaze was blemished and sickly. Her dry lips curved into a smile of wonderment. He knelt beside the withered figure and reached out for the golden syringe with his gloved hand. The tip of the needle slipped away silently as the Shadow observed the red formula that swirled within the glass. The Shadow dropped it onto the scarlet carpet and crushed it with his boot as he entered the quarters.
Shogun Otomo’s chambers were excessively opulent to an extent that vexed the Shadow. Whilst the civilians of Grey Wallow were starving and freezing to their early deaths outside, the Shogun slept in a chamber that possessed a soothing fire under a portrait of Khan Sano. Thick curtains of violet velvet draped over the windows to keep the biting Arkovian winds at bay and plump cushions were strewn atop a long thick ruby carpet that would comfort even the oldest and boniest of behinds. The Shogun was sitting cross-legged and facing the fire. To the Shadow’s chagrin, it appeared that his mark had been expecting him. Otomo’s long raven-black hair dropped over the shoulders of his spiked and plated armour as he raised a goblet.
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“I am sorry about your friend,” the Shogun said without turning to face his intruder.
The disturbing image of the bloody tiger carved across his fellow Fang’s chest flashed across the Shadow’s mind. For a moment he was back in that room, only the one dying in his arms with a bloody face was himself. The Shadow knew he would meet a similar fate someday. He hoped such a day was far into the decades, yet he still feared it. He felt the grip around his leather hilt tighten. Otomo rose from the fire and gazed at the Shadow that stood in the corner before him. His eyes were curious, his face gaunt with a forked beard that fitted his triangular head shape. There was something devilish and off-putting about his grin.
“You are not blue?” he asked in a jovial cadence.
The Shadow spoke. “I am not worthy.”
The Shogun chuckled with a sneer. “But you hope that will change tonight, yes?” When the Shadow remained silent, he continued. “What made me a dead man in their eyes, was it my deeds or merely knowing of your pitiful existence?”
The Shadow withdrew his katana in response. The steel gleamed in the firelight. Otomo’s grin simmered as he retrieved his curved tachi from the soft feathered cushion it was resting on. The Shogun’s steel was darker and rusted, yet it appeared to come alive at the flick of his wrist, becoming longer and taller than the average katana in the Shadow’s eyes. The tachi hissed as it spun, which caused the flames from the fire behind to waver. The Shogun wasted no further time and snapped forward.
Steel on steel chimed as their blades interlocked. It was when the Shadow saw the Shogun for what he truly was. There was a wild, maddening look in Otomo’s eyes, the look of a man who enjoyed the sport of violence. The Shadow had already started to believe in the tales of his cruelty when he stumbled upon the now carved-up fang in the downstairs chambers.
He kicked the madman away with his boot. The Shogun took the opportunity to grab the Shadow’s leg and twist it. The Shadow fell to the carpet with a groan. Otomo was more skilled than the Shadow had initially anticipated. The Shadow blocked a kick with the Shogun’s large boot before spinning back to his feet. Their steel clashed once more, and moonlight bounced off the blades. A screeching howl struck the chambers as the Shogun’s tachi ground itself down the Shadow’s katana. Otomo disarmed the Shadow’s blade when the tachi’s end reached the hilt. The Shadow could feel death scrambling at his ankles, inches away. As the Shogun raised the tachi high for the final cut, the Shadow charged into him. They crashed through the violet velvet curtains. The Shadow expected that there would be some sort of glass or obstruction within the frame, but instead, he found himself being greeted by icy Arkovian air.
The cold was ultimately a gift as the snow cushioned the Shadow’s fall. White flakes floated above in the moonlight wind, yet the scenic view was obscured by the Shogun that lay atop of him. The blood-stained end of the katana protruded from Otomo’s back. The Shogun looked deep into the Shadow’s eyes in disbelief. When he opened his mouth to utter something blood dribbled from the corners of his lips and sprinkled the snow. All that Otomo could muster was a wheeze before his own last light flickered away.
The Shadow rolled the body into the snow and stood. It took multiple attempts to pull his katana from Otomo’s belly and when the blade broke free its scrape threw flesh and screeched in the wind. He lifted the limp arm. Using the curved dagger from his belt, the Shadow departed the Shogun’s ringed finger from its hand in one fell swoop. The ring was as black as the night, with a crimson ram’s head whose horns circled within the ring’s frame. The detached finger was already beginning to turn blue in the harsh night’s icy wind. The Shadow took no joy in it. It was what Her Sapphire Highness had bid.
The Shadow moved away silently, yet quickly. It would be moments before the guards would be investigating the area like locusts on fresh crops. As he walked further away from the damned town and deeper into the darkness of the emerging blizzard, he began to lament. The first life I took, the Shadow thought. He knew that it would be the first of many.
He could not tell how long he had been walking for when the full moon’s light broke through the cracks of the blizzard. The winding walls of frost were closing in on the Shadow. Grey swarms obfuscated his vision, and he could feel each of his trudges through the knee-high snow reaching a breaking point. He succumbed to his fatigue and knelt in the snow. His hands were gloved, yet the iced flakes burned into his fingertips. He was weary. Shadows do not get weary…
He awoke to the warmth of a lantern’s flame. He lifted his head from the snow to see blue fire dancing under the stars. Azure light illuminated from all sides. The blizzard had dissipated, yet he remained stranded in the burning cold of the white desert under the strong moonlight sky. Blue wraiths crept into the light with zaffre zukins and fukumens wrapped around their faces. All that could be seen underneath were their eyes. They were dark and judging. A shadow that was not his own emerged into the wavering lights.
Heavy boots crushed the snow in front of him. A diagonal belt of curved daggers hung around a blue jacket with a steel breastplate underneath. As the Shadow meekly attempted to push himself to his knees the figure swiftly kicked him back into the snow angel that the Shadow had inadvertently created. He could see the steel snarling lion helm looking down on him in condemnation. The metallic fangs gleamed, and the steel mane spiralled into metallic lightning bolts behind.
“So, this is how you execute assassinations?” the man in the lion's helm questioned bitterly before delivering another sharp kick. “By napping in the snow and hoping that they die of old age?”
The Shadow tried to speak his defence, yet his lips had become frozen behind his fukumen. His arm which had stiffened in the blizzard attempted to reach into his pocket for the ring, but another kick swiftly curtailed the attempt.
“I told the fangs that you would be of little use,” Steel Lion scolded. “You are no better than your turncoat sister.”
“Xerxes.” The calling whisper floated and seemed to calm the surrounding winds. The fire in the lanterns simmered as she entered the inner circle. The Empress’ dark blue hair was luminous under the stars and the sapphire gem embedded in her silver circlet seemed to glimmer in waves. She was wrapped in layers of both white fur and black feather pelts. Her face had been painted a chalky white. Her eye shadow was zaffre the sapphire streak stretched around her head and beyond her thick, royal blue curls. “Allow Hideo to report,” the Empress said sweetly and patiently as she smiled down upon the Shadow like a benevolent angel.
Steel Lion grunted and removed his helm. The snarl on his real face was somehow more vindictive. He was strong-jawed and studying green eyes pierced under a bald cranium. He was clearly not native to Arkovia. He was born in Sunderran, in fact, which made his position as Thane to the Night Fangs both impressive and unprecedented. Despite that, the Shadow could not recall an interaction where his countenance was not derisive and bitter. Regardless, Steel Lion relented and stepped aside as he was bid.
The Shadow pressed himself up with his elbows. His hands were too frozen to move, and he felt weak. Using his thumb and clamped fingers, he clawed the late Shogun’s ring from his back pocket and presented it to her. The Empress took the ring with the edges of her pale white fingers and studied the evidence. She snapped Otomo’s finger in two. It was an icicle at this point, and she had freed it from the ring’s grip. “The ram’s head,” she observed. “Just as we specified,” she turned to her Thane. “See, Xerxes? I told you he was here to redeem the Horio name.”
Xerxes, the one they called Steel Lion, then inspected the ring and growled. He looked down on the Shadow as if he were still guilty of something. “Witnesses?” he asked.
“His concubine,” the Shadow reported honestly. “But she was high on momentum and unlikely to remember the encounter.”
“What if she does?” The frown on Xerxes’ face resembled the one on his lion helm. “It’s bad enough that Kashi was discovered. We’re a disgrace to the Night Fang name if our presence has been made known again.”
“Kashi was also alive,” the Shadow interjected. “Tortured; e ended himself when I found him. He believed himself a failure to the Empress.”
Xerxes cursed in the wind. “He was. There is no telling what secrets he told them.”
The Empress raised a pale hand, and her Thane fell silent. “Kashi was a loyal fang,” she eulogised. “He left his life behind for us. No torture could compare to the pained guilt he would have felt if he had truly betrayed us.” She gazed down at the Shadow with sapphire eyes. “Hideo, your katana.”
The Shadow obeyed and knelt in the snow as he held the blood-stained blade high towards the ghostly woman. The katana shined under the moonlight as the Empress placed her pale fingers around the hilt. “Hideo Horio,” she began to declare, “from this night forth, you renounce your old life and the people you once loved.” Her voice was as soft and cold as melting snowflakes.
“When you rise, you will stand as a brother to the Fraternity of Fangs. An assassin. An agent of bleak justice. You will continue the Night Fang oath to end the lives of monsters and the damned, those that have lost the right to call themselves human.” She lightly tapped the blood-stained end of the katana onto the Shadow’s right shoulder, then again on the left. “Now rise.” The wind began to pick up again. Snowflakes spun around the cabal and the blue fires within the lights thrashed and grew fiercer.
Hideo Horio died in New Jade City. The Shadow without a name had died out in the Arkovian snows. Now something darker would rise.