XVII. Drinks and Stories
This thing has caused you enough trouble already. It can go to hell.
Well, not literally. That would probably not be good.
The Heart beats faster and faster in your hand, the thicket of vegetal tendrils around it squirming madly. Its control is expanding slowly.
"You're not taking Harvest from me," you hiss, and turn on your heels - there, so close yet far away, is the breach in the wall through which you came. You set your bunraku in motion, steps slow at first as you fight back against the influence of the Heart, then faster and faster, a spray of fallen leaves in your wake. With your weaker hand you grasp the roots around the Heart, ripping out a few to make it lighter, then you brace your intact hand, reaching way back behind you. The pull of the Heart feels like you're moving through a curtain of water, a pressure making every gesture slower, more tiring. But you won't let it stop you. Crossing your arm before you, you perform an intricate pulling sequence, and within Harvest locks unclasp, cogs shift, the strength that shattered the golden skull is unlocked. You reach the wall, and with the speed of an avalanche you bring your arm around and throw with all your strength. Wood groans and snaps, the intensity of the effort on an already wounded body triggers internal damage all throughout your bunraku. But all that matters is this one motion.
The Heart flies out of your grasp and through the breach, vines flailing around it and finding no purchase. It rises, rises, rises until it is a blinking point in the sky - its turquoise glow for a moment makes it seem like an alien sun. Then it reaches the apex of its curve, and falls.
The glow fades. The rhythmic thumping of the fort stops.
A terrible feeling dawns on you. Without thinking, you turn around and begin running again, back to where you fought Akamine; all around you the leaves wither, the leafless grasping trees writhe as if in agony. You spot the ruined Chasing Star and your fellow puppeteer finishing to extract himself from its carcass; he moves slowly, clearly wounded, and stares at you in confusion as you approach. Without taking the time to explain you reach for him, grabbing him in your good hand and pulling him out of his bunraku, then fall prone, curling into a ball with him beneath your chest.
"What's going-"
And then the moving castle, deprived of the power putting it into motion, finally hits the ground. The impact shakes Harvest to the cogs, and you are wrenched in your seat for the third time that night, gritting your teeth at the kick. The ground shifts under you, earth cracking and shattering in places, the fort's buildings crumbling. Then the trees, uprooted or broken by the impact, begin to fall, one then another shattering on Harvest's back.
Then at last the tremor passes. Testing your damaged armor's limbs, you push the broken wood off your back and shoulders and slowly stand up. At your feet, Ondo stares up, his lean body wounded by bruises where his gloves twisted around him, his narrow face bloodied by some blow.
"...thank you," he says in a hoarse voice.
***
The transition of a false day to real night is rather striking. Where before the hill was lit by the Heart's glow it is now night lit only by stars and a sliver of a moon crescent. You climb down the ruined fort, its wall shattered in many places from the fall, and it's disorienting to realize that you are no longer on a hill - merely a small heap of earth, the top of the hill on which the fort was originally located; a quick glance to your left shows you the decapitated mount, its top now a rough crater as if it had exploded under some tremendous force.
You're carrying Ondo on Harvest's shoulder, one arm braced around your helm for support, your left arm hanging limply - but triumphant nonetheless. As you reach the foot of the earthen heap, you see a rider coming towards you from some distance away - and no one else; no trace of Lady Gozen and her samurai. The man halts his horse a couple of yards away, and you recognize him by his ornate dragon mask, one of Gozen's riders.
"Your majesty," he says, "I take it you were victorious?"
Ondo grins, tapping your helm. "I've never seen a Falling Mountain fight with such fury."
"Were you able to locate the Heart?" you ask. "I had to throw it to prevent it taking over my armor."
The man nods. "As soon as the fortress crashed, Lady Gozen headed straight for its fading glows. The Heart's servants…" He looks down, and you notice some distance away a couple of human bodies lying in the grass, dead branches grown out of their flesh. "The moment the glow faded, they fell over. They must have needed its energy to survive. The kami simply ran."
Like the ghosts of the castle, then - not true life, but souls forced into another mind's theatre play. The fact that this is a common thread in both heavenly relics you encountered so far disturbs you on some level - Heaven was the enforcer of the cycle of life, ensuring the integrity of death and the afterlife; yet their most potent items seem to have been able to bend that cycle when left to their own devices.
"We should join Lady Gozen, then," you say, and the samurai nods; he was likely told to stay here for that very task. He guides you through the sparse battlefield, where you spot more bodies - some fallen seemingly for no reason, like a puppet whose strings were cut, and others killed by arrows or a terrible blade.
The group of samurai is standing at the foot of a tree you're pretty sure didn't exist an hour ago. Its trunk is wide and thick, its branches sparse, and you can see the glow of the Heart within it slowly fading. Gozen's Rising Tide is standing next to it, her nodachi unsheathed. As you approach you see her strike the tree, again and again, to no visible effect.
Once you're close enough, you see her deliver a final strike with a great cry; her blade cuts into the wood, but only superficially, and as soon as she removes it the bark regenerates as if it had never been damaged.
"Can you cut this down?" Gozen asks as soon as she sees you, her voice curt and out of breath. You look at the tree and shake Harvest's head.
"With my damage I won't be much stronger than you, and my spear is broken so I don't have a good tool to do it. What happened?"
"By the time we reached it the Heart was already growing a tree around itself. Given how the glow faded when it did so, I assume it focused all the power it was using for this whole freak show around the fort and put it into a defensive cocoon of sorts. Wood's harder than anything I've seen. We won't be cutting it down tonight. Or even tomorrow, if this is all we have to work with. What happened to your bunraku?" she adds, looking up at Ondo. The puppeteer shrugs apologetically.
"Had to keep the Heart's focus so Tomoe could get an opening. Paid dearly for it."
Gozen stares at him for a moment, then nods. "Your sacrifice is appreciated."
"Don't cut it down," you suggest on a spur of inspiration. "Uproot it. Let the ashigaru earn their pay dragging it back to Summer whole. No need to exhaust ourselves cutting down a healing tree."
"Hmm. That's actually a good plan," Gozen says. "We'll do that. Not at night after a day of marching, though; this could take hours. We'll set up camp around the tree, keep a constant watch and hope it doesn't have any other surprises for us."
"Aye!"
***
Only one man died today. His name was Yoichi Ideo; he was born to nobility, a cousin of Takeda the puppeteer, a noble warrior. A kami struck him from the grass, and his body now lies covered by a cloth, surrounded by those of Shidao's men who were revived to fight you and who will be carried to their families in Summer so that they may be properly cremated. Tonight Ideo's brothers and sisters in battle honor him, yet also they feel the joy that there was only one such death. And for this they have you and Ondo to thank, the two braves who dashed into the breach and took the kami's heart before its fortress-body could lay waste to Gozen's troops.
So tonight the samurai have invited you both to eat and drink at their side; sake flows aplenty and you laugh as they share stories of Ideo's great deeds in battle (and his many humorous foibles in courting Summer's noblewomen). But as you talk of today's deeds the conversation shifts to your own, and you are asked to retell your expedition inside the fort. It is Ondo who most eagerly takes up the tale, recounting it with great flair (and slight dramatic exaggerations here and there), with you chiming in to add details of the battle only you could see. Together you talk of whirlwind of leaves, a man who was a tree, of a hurricane of arrowheads, and the samurai drink your tale with amazement.
"So then, Tomoe," asks Takeshi, a young man with handsome features but an unfashionable beard, cheeks flush with alcohol. "Ondo has had enough bolstering of his ego today! You still haven't told us the story of the hundred brigands and the lone puppeteer who fought them!"
You smile, looking into your cup, and down another gulp before slamming it empty on the ground.
"Are you sure you want to hear such a bloody tale?" you ask playfully, already knowing the answer. The men shout their agreement, and Ondo's eyes gleam as he refills your cup. With this encouragement you begin to weave a tale of resolve and daring, of overwhelming odds and unlikely victory, of powerful opponents nonetheless defeated. Hearing of the Old People fighting with bandits draws murmurs of surprise from the audience, and when you reach your brief and terribly one-sided duel with Iron Raven they shout approval and spite at the loathsome ronin. More cups are pushed in your hands and you drink them almost automatically, although you are not alone in this.
Eventually as fatigue sets in and your story reaches its end - reaches the displeasing accounts of the dead soldiers who would become your enemies of today - your tale slows and your tone becomes darker, and the soldiers themselves nod their heads and grow quiet. When you finally end, there is a moment of silence, before the warriors raise their cups in a last toast to those fallen not today but only a few days ago in that terrible battle. Your head is swimming a bit by then.
As the other samurai resume talking, in lower voices and more among themselves this time, Ondo leans towards you, his eyes sympathetic yet also curious.
"There is something on your mind, Tomoe. More than just the death of these soldiers. You carry a weight on your shoulders."
You chuckle without amusement. The truth is, you have more than one. You shouldn't speak of them - the ideal samurai is stoic even among friends, not revealing weakness of character. But drink and storytelling and the fatigue of the day have worn you down. You open your mouth to say something. Something you have felt for a while yet pushed back to focus on moment-to-moment survival comes to the fore.
[ ]"I failed my lord. I was not merely on the battlefield where he died; I was tasked with protecting him. I should have died before I allowed him to be killed, but I lived and he did not, and could not even kill myself. I'm not just a ronin; I'm a failure."
[ ]"I've killed too many. No one told me the weight of commanding a Falling Mountain. I killed fifty men in the other day's battle alone, and there were so many battles before - I have more blood on my hands than any soldier or warrior."
[ ]"I lied to my lord. I could have taken that relic in the castle, but it wouldn't have been right. It and the souls it had trapped were caught in a falsehood and deserved to rest. And having now fought the Heart after it, I begin to question the justice of Heaven."
