Pilgrim 3, p.19
Pilgrim 3, page 19
Yato considered her options for a moment, and since there wasn’t a bed in the other room, she opted to stay in the room with Jelmay. She removed her gauntleted blades and placed them on the nightstand next to the bed.
She turned to Danzen. “Will you bend your echo in the morning?”
“Likely.”
“Perhaps I will join you then, if you don’t mind.”
“By all means.”
Danzen shifted to the second room and took a seat against the wall, crossing his legs beneath his body. He was certain that Yato knew more about bending her echo than she was letting on, especially with her ability to summon her bladed weapons. They would both have to get tested at some point in the near future, to see where they stood on the spectrum. If she was already starting the path, which it was clear that she was, there was a chance that Yato would grow much stronger than Danzen, at least when it came to his echo. He wondered what would become of her over the next several years, what she hoped to gain in joining them.
Regardless, he owed it to Thane to shepherd her for as long as she wanted. It didn’t hurt having someone with real combat knowledge as part of the group, not that Jelmay or Kudzu couldn’t fight when called upon. Still, they weren’t trained, and much of Jelmay’s power relied on trickery, which could always backfire. Kudzu was swift in her fox form, and was able to ambush enemies at ease, but she was also vulnerable considering her size. She could fight well enough in her human form, but was no match for an expert swordsman.
Having Yato around, for however long she planned to stay, would give their small group an edge. Danzen was keenly aware of this, but he didn’t know what her presence would bring in terms of future conflicts, or the targets on his own head. She didn’t deserve to be part of that. It was her choice to stick around, and he would do his best to honor her company, Danzen’s own way of paying homage to Thane, but she needed to understand the risks that came by association.
He would speak to her about it tomorrow, before they bent their echoes.
She still had time to get away, to disappear as he had attempted two years ago, only better, without a contract for her life. Jelmay could give her money, enough to easily secure her in her journey for the rest of the year, maybe longer. Danzen wasn’t opposed to visiting a bank as well, using his power to get her even more funding if necessary.
Everyone deserved a second chance, one that was out of harm’s way.
****
Danzen slept better than he had in a week, even in his seated position. He faintly remembered a dream about one of his training sessions with Nomin, the blind assassin always keeping him on his toes. The daylight coming in from the window cast a sparkling arc onto the ground, Kudzu on her side now, a single eye open as she took Danzen in.
“Morning,” he said.
“What did she do to me?”
“Oiwa?”
“Is that the woman that runs the inn?” asked Kudzu.
“She is. She healed you using her own echo. I believe there may have been some internal damage, which you may naturally heal from, but she sped up the process. She wants you to rest here another day or so.”
Kudzu slowly tilted her chin down. “I hope I haven’t become a burden.”
“You’re nothing like that. I would rather you be well rested before we head to the nunnery.”
“Jelmay? Yato?”
“In the other room. We’re going to head out today, but we should be back by nightfall.”
“Where are you going?”
Danzen caught Kudzu up on the previous night’s proceedings, how Shimaru, the female innkeeper’s son, had gone to the Monkurenji Temple to prove to a local ruffian named Toku that he was tough enough to join his cause. He never returned, and Danzen hoped to discover what happened to him.
“Do you think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Danzen heard a light tap at the door that joined the two rooms together. Yato stepped in, wearing the same disguise she had picked up in Arsi. They still hadn’t gotten new clothing for her yet, which was likely something they would need to do today.
“We’re going to bend our echoes for a little while,” he told Kudzu. “Breakfast should be available soon.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat,” Yato told her. “It will help you recover.”
“We’ll see.” Kudzu smiled at Danzen and then slowly began to relax onto the straw pillow again, her eyes eventually pressing shut.
“Where should we go to bend?” Danzen asked Yato.
“There is a space for us in the room across the hall. I checked with the old man this morning. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why is that?” he asked as they left the room and crossed the hallway. They came into the adjoining guest bedroom, held together by a circular rug, hand-stitched with red and blue thread depicting a battle scene.
“Nightmares,” Yato admitted. “I wasn’t expecting us to find Toku in the way that we did last night. It was just disturbing.”
Danzen didn’t reply. He’d seen enough in his twenty years as an assassin to know that humans were capable of monstrous things. After slightly bowing his head to Yato, he got into a sword stance with one leg before the other.
“What is your ranking?” he asked. “I’m a Crystal Mancer.”
“I’ve never been tested.”
“But you have an understanding of bending your echo, right? You must be using your echo to be able to summon your blades.”
“I do, yes. Master Thane taught me how to do it.”
“And did he give you a morning practice, something to advance your power? You can obviously summon your echo, but did he show you more?”
“Not really. Tensei and Sonin weren’t really focused on using their weapons in that way, and I believe that he would have shown me at some point, but most of my training involved combat once my blades were already drawn.”
“I’m not the one that should be teaching you how to bend your echo.”
“You seem to know how to do it,” Yato observed.
“I know what works for me.”
“If it works for you, it may work for me.”
“Get your weapons.”
Yato left, and for the minute or so that she was gone, Danzen slowly moved forward, Astra gripped in both hands. He could feel his echo pulsing within him. He was ready.
She returned, both gauntleted blades already out of their protective casing.
“As I said, I’m not really qualified to teach this,” Danzen began, “but I can at least tell you what has worked for me, and what continues to work. I like to get into a stance used to face someone with a shield.” He brought a foot back and hunkered down, a bit loose at the waist. “I have found that going through slow-motion movements of an attack allows me to feel my echo the most. And that’s what this practice is all about, at least it is for me. If you can feel it, it’s working, and you can take command of your echo in a way. I wouldn’t say it is exactly like a dance, but I believe there are some similarities.”
Danzen didn’t have much time to think about what he had just told her, but a thought did pop into his head as the words left his mouth. Was this how he would eventually control his demons? Was it a mind over matter scenario? Did he simply need to let his echo work through him?
Yato brought her arms up, Danzen putting aside a flashback he had in that moment, one related to Soko. They had sparred multiple times, and there had been a time early on that she had tried using gauntleted blades. Standing before him now, her dark bangs swept across her forehead, a determined look on her face, Yato looked as if she could be Soko’s younger sister. Here was an assassin who had yet to be permanently scarred by reality, one who hadn’t abused Sunyata talismans, one who still, to some degree, had hope in her life if she chose to pursue it.
Yato brought a fist forward and then snapped it back. As if there were a string attached to her elbow, she performed a quick punch. She did the same, but slower this time. She had good form, and if Danzen were her teacher he would have her work on her strength. A bladed jab like that could end someone’s life before the fight officially started. Always a good strategy.
He watched her form and she came in for a side swing, Danzen standing about six feet away from her.
An idea came to him.
He brought his sword to the ready; Yato stopped what she was doing.
Moving in a sweeping motion, Danzen came forward like he was going to strike her, and she shifted to mirror blocking his attack. He could feel it almost immediately, remnants of Sunyata twisting deep in his stomach.
It soon became a dance, just as he had suggested, Danzen sensing that there was energy swirling around the room with them, the two never touching blades, but always coming close enough that he could feel her echo pressing back against his. Yato was by no means weak, and the more they bent their echoes, the more he realized that he was familiar with the power she was putting off.
It reminded him of Nomin.
Only in facing a new opponent also familiar with her echo did he realize the difference between the power Nomin possessed over someone like Soko, a remnant exploiter. Strong and fierce, sure, but there was something hollow about Soko’s attacks, something Danzen only understood now in facing someone organically using their echo.
He was surprised that he hadn’t recognized it before. He’d never focused on the power in his skirmishes with Nomin, only focused on either learning from the blind assassin, or in the end, overwhelming her so she couldn’t kill him.
Remembering the fight they’d had back in his mother’s nunnery sparked something in his chest, Danzen’s hands tensing, his grip solidifying on his blade as he came forward again. Yato adjusted to his movement, and it was only after they had been practicing for a while that she stepped back and started to catch her breath. “Your eyes…”
Danzen opened his eyes. They had been closed for the last fifteen minutes.
“Sorry. I hope I didn’t come too close,” he said.
“No, it was like you could see me.”
“It is something I learned.”
“Could you… teach me that?”
Danzen looked the young assassin over. He didn’t want to train someone; he didn’t want yet another person to go down his path, to become a natural-born killer. But he could feel Sunyata within him now, and he noticed the difference in practicing with Yato versus practicing alone. He also knew that not training her would lead to a situation in which she was less prepared than she could have been if she continued down the assassin path. Was he really ready to take on an apprentice? Was that what this was becoming?
Danzen returned his blade to its scabbard.
The door popped open and Jelmay stepped into the room, his eyes lifting in surprise when he saw Yato with her blades drawn.
“Am I… interrupting something here?”
“We were just bending our echoes,” Danzen said.
“It looked like you two were about to fight.”
“No, nothing like that,” Danzen assured him.
“Well, allow me to be the bearer of the best news you’ve heard all morning: breakfast is ready, and it is a full spread, just as I’d asked for. You want meat? We have meat. You want pastries? We have a piping-hot basket of pastries. Tea? Several varieties. Vegetables? I mean, that’s your choice if you want to live that kind of supposedly healthy lifestyle, but we have that as well. Did I mention we have meat? Eggs? How do you want them? You get what I’m trying to say here, Pilgrim, Lady Pilgrim. Let’s eat our hearts out and get to this haunted temple so we can be back before sunset tonight. I still have some gambling I need to do.”
.Chapter Three.
Little was said over breakfast, Oiwa allowing Danzen and his companions to eat before she had a conversation with him on what he had discovered from Toku. Danzen recognized that it took great restraint on her part, and he was prepared to speak to her rather than enjoy their meal, but she insisted that they finish their food first.
Able to join them, Kudzu had a light porridge, and while she was looking better, it was clear that she needed to rest for a little longer. Predictably, Jelmay ate more than his fair share, the cat barely able to keep his human form as he finally pressed away from the table and placed both feet on the ground.
“Arggh…” he moaned, his hands on his distended stomach.
“How are you supposed to walk all day like that?” Kudzu asked him, her eyes narrowed on the bakeneko.
“It’s fuel,” Jelmay told her with a wink. “Trust me, I know a lot about long journeys, and a good meal is crucial. Who knows what we’re going to eat along the way. We are going to eat, right?” he asked Danzen.
Rather than respond, the former assassin stepped past Jelmay and into the other room, where he found Oiwa seated on a chair, her hands on her lap, a worried look on her face.
“You didn’t have to wait, you know,” he told her.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” she said again. “Not while you’re enjoying your meal.”
“So good!” Jelmay called from the other room as he went for another plate.
Oiwa nodded toward his voice. “See? I didn’t want to disrupt any of that.”
Yato joined Danzen, still with her gauntlets on, which looked odd without the robes she normally wore.
“Are you familiar with the Monkurenji Temple?” he asked the elderly woman. “Toku said that this is where your son went.”
Mention of the temple caused the woman to tear up, the wrinkles on her face more pronounced as she tried to hide her emotions. She eventually couldn’t help herself, and after she wiped her eyes with the end of her apron, she spoke: “It’s an abandoned temple, one that has a history. When I was a child, young people used to tease each other that a man brave enough to stay in the temple an entire night would be blessed the next day by meeting the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. It was a foolish notion, but people actually thought that this was true. It all started because of a peddler named Yoshimaru.”
“Yoshimaru?” Yato asked.
“After a day of drinking, Yoshimaru made a bet with a group of young men that he could stay in the abandoned temple for a night by himself. If he made it through the night, one of them would offer him his sister. Different era, you know, back before Sunyata fell. It wasn’t common in this region to make that kind of bet, but older brothers had more control over women at that time. The men agreed, and they set out for the temple. The Monkurenji Temple is nearly a day’s walk from here, so they drank along the way, arriving in the late morning. They slept, and woke up and drank some more. Then it was time.”
“What happened next?” Yato asked.
Oiwa bit her lip. “Yoshimaru entered the temple with a bottle of sake while the others remained outside. It didn’t seem like anything was going to happen, and eventually he fell into a drunken sleep, all of them did. Then the ones outside were awakened by a terrible banging around inside the temple, Yoshimaru screaming at the top of his lungs. ‘The eyes! The eyes!’ he screamed again and again. Then there was silence. Then the morning came. It took the men outside a couple hours to summon the guts to enter the temple, and when they did they found nothing but a bloodied rag and a pair of eyes lying on the ground, looking at them. They ran. Have you heard of a game called niramekko?” she asked Danzen.
“A children’s game, correct?” he asked, vaguely remembering that he had seen a few young girls playing this game during one of his missions in the north.
“Niramekko is named after this event. In the game, two people stare into one another’s eyes, each making a strange face, you know, to force the other to laugh. The one who laughs first ‘loses their eyes’ to the Monkurenji Temple. I never really thought much about it,” she said bitterly. “But I was smart enough not to ever step foot near that temple. Shimaru is smarter than this, he knew better than that. My only son. If he’s there…” She brought her hand over her mouth, almost refusing to say the words. “Then he’s likely dead.”
“If that is that case, then we will retrieve the body,” Danzen said carefully as Jelmay entered the space, the bakeneko noticing that Oiwa looked distraught. He quickly turned back to the other room, where Kudzu was.
“You won’t find a body if he went to the temple and stayed overnight,” she said, her voice thin now, Oiwa barely keeping it together. “Please don’t risk yourself like that, if it is the case. You shouldn’t go in there.”
“Be that as it may, if it’s there, and I’m able to discover it, I will do my best to bring the body back to you so you can bury it properly. How do we get to the temple?”
After Oiwa gave them directions, Danzen, Jelmay, and Yato left, the three first going to a tailor to get new robes. Danzen instantly recognized the material that the tailor used. It was the same as the robes his mother had given him, which made sense considering their proximity to her nunnery.
Because the day would be warm, he chose a lighter set, one that already had a hood on it, the robes a deep gray color. Yato chose something similar and also with a hood. Jelmay didn’t buy any clothing, but he did haggle until he got a steep discount, the tailor ready to be done with him by the time the sale was over.
“It was necessary,” he said as they headed out of the village, to the north, in the same direction as Shodren’s nunnery. “I know they don’t bargain out here as much as they do in Arsi, but that’s not my problem.”
According to Oiwa, they would reach a large boulder and take the westernmost path. This trail would eventually lead them to the Monkurenji Temple. She claimed that it wound its way through both a forest and a ‘long stretch of nothing,’ as she called it. There was a river nearby where they would be able to get water, and plenty of space to camp if they ended up staying longer.
Ready for anything, Danzen had both his swords with him now; he wore his gauntleted weapons, and his Blade of Darkness was slung across his back. He didn’t carry anything else.
“So, this temple is definitely haunted, and apparently it likes drunks. Sound about right?” Jelmay asked after Yato had caught him up on what Oiwa had told her. He didn’t wait for anyone to reply. “For the record: I’m about as interested in getting involved in a haunted temple as I am spending most of my day walking there and back.”
She turned to Danzen. “Will you bend your echo in the morning?”
“Likely.”
“Perhaps I will join you then, if you don’t mind.”
“By all means.”
Danzen shifted to the second room and took a seat against the wall, crossing his legs beneath his body. He was certain that Yato knew more about bending her echo than she was letting on, especially with her ability to summon her bladed weapons. They would both have to get tested at some point in the near future, to see where they stood on the spectrum. If she was already starting the path, which it was clear that she was, there was a chance that Yato would grow much stronger than Danzen, at least when it came to his echo. He wondered what would become of her over the next several years, what she hoped to gain in joining them.
Regardless, he owed it to Thane to shepherd her for as long as she wanted. It didn’t hurt having someone with real combat knowledge as part of the group, not that Jelmay or Kudzu couldn’t fight when called upon. Still, they weren’t trained, and much of Jelmay’s power relied on trickery, which could always backfire. Kudzu was swift in her fox form, and was able to ambush enemies at ease, but she was also vulnerable considering her size. She could fight well enough in her human form, but was no match for an expert swordsman.
Having Yato around, for however long she planned to stay, would give their small group an edge. Danzen was keenly aware of this, but he didn’t know what her presence would bring in terms of future conflicts, or the targets on his own head. She didn’t deserve to be part of that. It was her choice to stick around, and he would do his best to honor her company, Danzen’s own way of paying homage to Thane, but she needed to understand the risks that came by association.
He would speak to her about it tomorrow, before they bent their echoes.
She still had time to get away, to disappear as he had attempted two years ago, only better, without a contract for her life. Jelmay could give her money, enough to easily secure her in her journey for the rest of the year, maybe longer. Danzen wasn’t opposed to visiting a bank as well, using his power to get her even more funding if necessary.
Everyone deserved a second chance, one that was out of harm’s way.
****
Danzen slept better than he had in a week, even in his seated position. He faintly remembered a dream about one of his training sessions with Nomin, the blind assassin always keeping him on his toes. The daylight coming in from the window cast a sparkling arc onto the ground, Kudzu on her side now, a single eye open as she took Danzen in.
“Morning,” he said.
“What did she do to me?”
“Oiwa?”
“Is that the woman that runs the inn?” asked Kudzu.
“She is. She healed you using her own echo. I believe there may have been some internal damage, which you may naturally heal from, but she sped up the process. She wants you to rest here another day or so.”
Kudzu slowly tilted her chin down. “I hope I haven’t become a burden.”
“You’re nothing like that. I would rather you be well rested before we head to the nunnery.”
“Jelmay? Yato?”
“In the other room. We’re going to head out today, but we should be back by nightfall.”
“Where are you going?”
Danzen caught Kudzu up on the previous night’s proceedings, how Shimaru, the female innkeeper’s son, had gone to the Monkurenji Temple to prove to a local ruffian named Toku that he was tough enough to join his cause. He never returned, and Danzen hoped to discover what happened to him.
“Do you think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Danzen heard a light tap at the door that joined the two rooms together. Yato stepped in, wearing the same disguise she had picked up in Arsi. They still hadn’t gotten new clothing for her yet, which was likely something they would need to do today.
“We’re going to bend our echoes for a little while,” he told Kudzu. “Breakfast should be available soon.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat,” Yato told her. “It will help you recover.”
“We’ll see.” Kudzu smiled at Danzen and then slowly began to relax onto the straw pillow again, her eyes eventually pressing shut.
“Where should we go to bend?” Danzen asked Yato.
“There is a space for us in the room across the hall. I checked with the old man this morning. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why is that?” he asked as they left the room and crossed the hallway. They came into the adjoining guest bedroom, held together by a circular rug, hand-stitched with red and blue thread depicting a battle scene.
“Nightmares,” Yato admitted. “I wasn’t expecting us to find Toku in the way that we did last night. It was just disturbing.”
Danzen didn’t reply. He’d seen enough in his twenty years as an assassin to know that humans were capable of monstrous things. After slightly bowing his head to Yato, he got into a sword stance with one leg before the other.
“What is your ranking?” he asked. “I’m a Crystal Mancer.”
“I’ve never been tested.”
“But you have an understanding of bending your echo, right? You must be using your echo to be able to summon your blades.”
“I do, yes. Master Thane taught me how to do it.”
“And did he give you a morning practice, something to advance your power? You can obviously summon your echo, but did he show you more?”
“Not really. Tensei and Sonin weren’t really focused on using their weapons in that way, and I believe that he would have shown me at some point, but most of my training involved combat once my blades were already drawn.”
“I’m not the one that should be teaching you how to bend your echo.”
“You seem to know how to do it,” Yato observed.
“I know what works for me.”
“If it works for you, it may work for me.”
“Get your weapons.”
Yato left, and for the minute or so that she was gone, Danzen slowly moved forward, Astra gripped in both hands. He could feel his echo pulsing within him. He was ready.
She returned, both gauntleted blades already out of their protective casing.
“As I said, I’m not really qualified to teach this,” Danzen began, “but I can at least tell you what has worked for me, and what continues to work. I like to get into a stance used to face someone with a shield.” He brought a foot back and hunkered down, a bit loose at the waist. “I have found that going through slow-motion movements of an attack allows me to feel my echo the most. And that’s what this practice is all about, at least it is for me. If you can feel it, it’s working, and you can take command of your echo in a way. I wouldn’t say it is exactly like a dance, but I believe there are some similarities.”
Danzen didn’t have much time to think about what he had just told her, but a thought did pop into his head as the words left his mouth. Was this how he would eventually control his demons? Was it a mind over matter scenario? Did he simply need to let his echo work through him?
Yato brought her arms up, Danzen putting aside a flashback he had in that moment, one related to Soko. They had sparred multiple times, and there had been a time early on that she had tried using gauntleted blades. Standing before him now, her dark bangs swept across her forehead, a determined look on her face, Yato looked as if she could be Soko’s younger sister. Here was an assassin who had yet to be permanently scarred by reality, one who hadn’t abused Sunyata talismans, one who still, to some degree, had hope in her life if she chose to pursue it.
Yato brought a fist forward and then snapped it back. As if there were a string attached to her elbow, she performed a quick punch. She did the same, but slower this time. She had good form, and if Danzen were her teacher he would have her work on her strength. A bladed jab like that could end someone’s life before the fight officially started. Always a good strategy.
He watched her form and she came in for a side swing, Danzen standing about six feet away from her.
An idea came to him.
He brought his sword to the ready; Yato stopped what she was doing.
Moving in a sweeping motion, Danzen came forward like he was going to strike her, and she shifted to mirror blocking his attack. He could feel it almost immediately, remnants of Sunyata twisting deep in his stomach.
It soon became a dance, just as he had suggested, Danzen sensing that there was energy swirling around the room with them, the two never touching blades, but always coming close enough that he could feel her echo pressing back against his. Yato was by no means weak, and the more they bent their echoes, the more he realized that he was familiar with the power she was putting off.
It reminded him of Nomin.
Only in facing a new opponent also familiar with her echo did he realize the difference between the power Nomin possessed over someone like Soko, a remnant exploiter. Strong and fierce, sure, but there was something hollow about Soko’s attacks, something Danzen only understood now in facing someone organically using their echo.
He was surprised that he hadn’t recognized it before. He’d never focused on the power in his skirmishes with Nomin, only focused on either learning from the blind assassin, or in the end, overwhelming her so she couldn’t kill him.
Remembering the fight they’d had back in his mother’s nunnery sparked something in his chest, Danzen’s hands tensing, his grip solidifying on his blade as he came forward again. Yato adjusted to his movement, and it was only after they had been practicing for a while that she stepped back and started to catch her breath. “Your eyes…”
Danzen opened his eyes. They had been closed for the last fifteen minutes.
“Sorry. I hope I didn’t come too close,” he said.
“No, it was like you could see me.”
“It is something I learned.”
“Could you… teach me that?”
Danzen looked the young assassin over. He didn’t want to train someone; he didn’t want yet another person to go down his path, to become a natural-born killer. But he could feel Sunyata within him now, and he noticed the difference in practicing with Yato versus practicing alone. He also knew that not training her would lead to a situation in which she was less prepared than she could have been if she continued down the assassin path. Was he really ready to take on an apprentice? Was that what this was becoming?
Danzen returned his blade to its scabbard.
The door popped open and Jelmay stepped into the room, his eyes lifting in surprise when he saw Yato with her blades drawn.
“Am I… interrupting something here?”
“We were just bending our echoes,” Danzen said.
“It looked like you two were about to fight.”
“No, nothing like that,” Danzen assured him.
“Well, allow me to be the bearer of the best news you’ve heard all morning: breakfast is ready, and it is a full spread, just as I’d asked for. You want meat? We have meat. You want pastries? We have a piping-hot basket of pastries. Tea? Several varieties. Vegetables? I mean, that’s your choice if you want to live that kind of supposedly healthy lifestyle, but we have that as well. Did I mention we have meat? Eggs? How do you want them? You get what I’m trying to say here, Pilgrim, Lady Pilgrim. Let’s eat our hearts out and get to this haunted temple so we can be back before sunset tonight. I still have some gambling I need to do.”
.Chapter Three.
Little was said over breakfast, Oiwa allowing Danzen and his companions to eat before she had a conversation with him on what he had discovered from Toku. Danzen recognized that it took great restraint on her part, and he was prepared to speak to her rather than enjoy their meal, but she insisted that they finish their food first.
Able to join them, Kudzu had a light porridge, and while she was looking better, it was clear that she needed to rest for a little longer. Predictably, Jelmay ate more than his fair share, the cat barely able to keep his human form as he finally pressed away from the table and placed both feet on the ground.
“Arggh…” he moaned, his hands on his distended stomach.
“How are you supposed to walk all day like that?” Kudzu asked him, her eyes narrowed on the bakeneko.
“It’s fuel,” Jelmay told her with a wink. “Trust me, I know a lot about long journeys, and a good meal is crucial. Who knows what we’re going to eat along the way. We are going to eat, right?” he asked Danzen.
Rather than respond, the former assassin stepped past Jelmay and into the other room, where he found Oiwa seated on a chair, her hands on her lap, a worried look on her face.
“You didn’t have to wait, you know,” he told her.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” she said again. “Not while you’re enjoying your meal.”
“So good!” Jelmay called from the other room as he went for another plate.
Oiwa nodded toward his voice. “See? I didn’t want to disrupt any of that.”
Yato joined Danzen, still with her gauntlets on, which looked odd without the robes she normally wore.
“Are you familiar with the Monkurenji Temple?” he asked the elderly woman. “Toku said that this is where your son went.”
Mention of the temple caused the woman to tear up, the wrinkles on her face more pronounced as she tried to hide her emotions. She eventually couldn’t help herself, and after she wiped her eyes with the end of her apron, she spoke: “It’s an abandoned temple, one that has a history. When I was a child, young people used to tease each other that a man brave enough to stay in the temple an entire night would be blessed the next day by meeting the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. It was a foolish notion, but people actually thought that this was true. It all started because of a peddler named Yoshimaru.”
“Yoshimaru?” Yato asked.
“After a day of drinking, Yoshimaru made a bet with a group of young men that he could stay in the abandoned temple for a night by himself. If he made it through the night, one of them would offer him his sister. Different era, you know, back before Sunyata fell. It wasn’t common in this region to make that kind of bet, but older brothers had more control over women at that time. The men agreed, and they set out for the temple. The Monkurenji Temple is nearly a day’s walk from here, so they drank along the way, arriving in the late morning. They slept, and woke up and drank some more. Then it was time.”
“What happened next?” Yato asked.
Oiwa bit her lip. “Yoshimaru entered the temple with a bottle of sake while the others remained outside. It didn’t seem like anything was going to happen, and eventually he fell into a drunken sleep, all of them did. Then the ones outside were awakened by a terrible banging around inside the temple, Yoshimaru screaming at the top of his lungs. ‘The eyes! The eyes!’ he screamed again and again. Then there was silence. Then the morning came. It took the men outside a couple hours to summon the guts to enter the temple, and when they did they found nothing but a bloodied rag and a pair of eyes lying on the ground, looking at them. They ran. Have you heard of a game called niramekko?” she asked Danzen.
“A children’s game, correct?” he asked, vaguely remembering that he had seen a few young girls playing this game during one of his missions in the north.
“Niramekko is named after this event. In the game, two people stare into one another’s eyes, each making a strange face, you know, to force the other to laugh. The one who laughs first ‘loses their eyes’ to the Monkurenji Temple. I never really thought much about it,” she said bitterly. “But I was smart enough not to ever step foot near that temple. Shimaru is smarter than this, he knew better than that. My only son. If he’s there…” She brought her hand over her mouth, almost refusing to say the words. “Then he’s likely dead.”
“If that is that case, then we will retrieve the body,” Danzen said carefully as Jelmay entered the space, the bakeneko noticing that Oiwa looked distraught. He quickly turned back to the other room, where Kudzu was.
“You won’t find a body if he went to the temple and stayed overnight,” she said, her voice thin now, Oiwa barely keeping it together. “Please don’t risk yourself like that, if it is the case. You shouldn’t go in there.”
“Be that as it may, if it’s there, and I’m able to discover it, I will do my best to bring the body back to you so you can bury it properly. How do we get to the temple?”
After Oiwa gave them directions, Danzen, Jelmay, and Yato left, the three first going to a tailor to get new robes. Danzen instantly recognized the material that the tailor used. It was the same as the robes his mother had given him, which made sense considering their proximity to her nunnery.
Because the day would be warm, he chose a lighter set, one that already had a hood on it, the robes a deep gray color. Yato chose something similar and also with a hood. Jelmay didn’t buy any clothing, but he did haggle until he got a steep discount, the tailor ready to be done with him by the time the sale was over.
“It was necessary,” he said as they headed out of the village, to the north, in the same direction as Shodren’s nunnery. “I know they don’t bargain out here as much as they do in Arsi, but that’s not my problem.”
According to Oiwa, they would reach a large boulder and take the westernmost path. This trail would eventually lead them to the Monkurenji Temple. She claimed that it wound its way through both a forest and a ‘long stretch of nothing,’ as she called it. There was a river nearby where they would be able to get water, and plenty of space to camp if they ended up staying longer.
Ready for anything, Danzen had both his swords with him now; he wore his gauntleted weapons, and his Blade of Darkness was slung across his back. He didn’t carry anything else.
“So, this temple is definitely haunted, and apparently it likes drunks. Sound about right?” Jelmay asked after Yato had caught him up on what Oiwa had told her. He didn’t wait for anyone to reply. “For the record: I’m about as interested in getting involved in a haunted temple as I am spending most of my day walking there and back.”
