VI. Release
You stare at the skull for a long time, reflecting upon what you've seen and heard.
This is not a just fate. To replay one final day endlessly, without ever forming new memories, without ever growing beyond the remembrance of that one day, losing even all other memories in time… It is no life; it is the sickness of the old, the true ancients who sit in their chairs staring at a world only they can see, forgetting all that they've ever known. And to do this, out of guilt, this memory, this record of a dead woman, is trapping dozens of souls in that delusion, a gesture of misguided kindness.
It is not kindness to allow this.
You take the skull in your hands, holding it up to your face, staring into it - but Aoi's image is truly gone, for now at least; it is only a piece of beautiful jewelry. You sigh, resigning yourself, and brandish your spear. You strike with the haft, one swift blow to end it quickly.
The spear bounces back, quivering in your hands, and the skull sits pristine.
You frown and try again, harder this time, yet to no more effect. You pick up the skull in your hands, pushing against it to crush it, and achieve nothing. Of course. It withstood a fall from the heavens to the earth. It was a relic made to endure the test of the time. Your mortal strength will not break it. You take the item under your arm and descend back into the courtyard, moving through stairs and corridors full of shadows and cold stone, the illusion fully dissipated.
You place the golden skull in the center of the courtyard, and push yourself up into the hatch of your bunraku. Rain soaking the pavement, you raise your steel titan, stepping out of the protective walls, and stand with all its might in the middle of the yard. Your body tenses against the strings of your puppet; you form your fingers into a claw-like grip, sliding them slowly across your chest, and deep within the limbs of your armor heavy cogs shift, unlocking its full strength, a striking power that cannot be sustained without damaging your frame. You grasp the immense naginata, its tree-trunk haft in both hands, and raise it high to the moon. Under your breath you whisper a wordless prayer, a string of syllables whose meaning is long forgotten. Then you strike.
The curved blade catches moonlight and for a moment it seems as if a crescent moon itself. Then it falls, putting truth to the name of your frame, a Falling Mountain.
The golden skull shatters into a hundred fragments. In that same moment comes a tidal wave of golden light, a crushing pressure that knocks you into your seat, and your vision goes blank. No, not blank. It is a blinding light which resolves itself into…
You are sitting upright in your bed, staring wide-eyed as your mother tells you the story of the daring young mortal who stole a star from the sky. She is tired - she works herself to the bone - but she is smiling at how awed you are by such a simple story. You try your hardest to commit it to memory, to never forget it.
You are sitting in the street, watching as richer men and women pass, hawking your wares with your still-childish voice. A dozen of hair pieces patiently carved out of wood and painted to attract the eye, butterflies and beetles and flowers. When the day ends you collect your earnings and you go bribe one of the servants of the old preceptor so that he'll let you curl up beneath his window and listen to the stories. You never forget a word of them.
You are sitting in court, smiling at your success, reciting all the stories you have spent these years memorizing in a voice as smooth as a river in summer. They listen to you, and you know that for now at least you will not want for food or a roof over your head. In the crowd your eyes catches that of a handsome man whose smile is a little too knowing to your taste; for a second his eyes glow with something not human, and your heart skips a beat.
You are sitting in a chariot pulled by a flock of sparrows, riding over the clouds, trying not to shriek in terror. At your side, your consort is still smiling that same smile as on the first day. Then you see them, filling your sight all at once: the glittering towers of Heaven, the dragons coiling across the skies, the stars and the moon and the sun all in the sky at once. You forget your fear then, and open your mouth in awe.
You are sitting in the tea room facing your beautiful garden. Your husband has left once again, and you keenly feel the walls around you. He means no ill will, does not intend to keep you prisoner, but sees no reason to arrange for you a visit to the human world. You sit, fanning yourself with a gold-laced fan, brushing imaginary dust off a silken kimono, sipping tea out of a porcelain cup, attended by countless servants; but your eyes are cast on the walls of your garden, and you long to hear new stories.
The deluge of visions ceases, and the world returns as you blink. The castle is gone; the radiance that washed over you has replaced it with a magnificent mansion of a style of architecture unknown to you, a building never meant to face war, all paper walls and gracile wooden beams and multi-tiered roofs, with a divine gate in the front of its alley and an orchard in its garden, a place as beautiful as a dream. Beyond that mansion are the shadows of glittering towers, flying contraptions, serpentine shapes crossing the air…
Then the image dissolves into motes of golden light. You watch as they dance across your armor, painting bright lines as if drawing the most intricate of tattoos on the steel giant's skin; and then that too fades away, and you are returned to the silent night. Even the rain soon ceases its patter.
You dig a hole in the middle of the courtyard and bury the shards of the skull in it. With your bunraku's naginata, you trace a command of rest over that tomb, then on the wall over the main door of the castle itself. In your experienced hands even the armor's clumsy controls manage to use it with the grace of a brush, its blade digging into stone and earth as long as you put in enough force. When that is done you climb down and go through every room in the castle, reciting prayers of rest for the dead while dipping your fingers into what's left of your small beer and flicking it to the ground in libation, over and over.
At last, you sit down on your mat in front of the cold fireplace. Looking around you, you can almost feel as if the dancers would materialize once again to resume their party… But no, there is only the quiet of the night, and your own thoughts hurtling through your head.
You take a long sip of sake, and collapse onto your mat.
[Resolve rank is: DETERMINED]
[Acquired character trait: A Memory of Heaven]
***
You've been walking for two days now, and you know you are getting closer to your goal. Yesterday you spotted bandits, riding along the hills and observing you from afar, but they did not dare to approach a bunraku with their limited numbers. Later you saw a village on the horizon, but it was too far off your route to make a stop, and so you kept going, following the river always. Other than this there is little to break the monotony of the march, or to distract you from your bleak thoughts.
Now, more and more patches of fertile land are appearing, strange islands of greenery in the beaten earth of the warlands. The transition between enclaves and battlegrounds is usually more straightforward, but here it's as if both terrains were encroaching upon each other and creating a broken patchwork - and you see no human being anywhere you look, even though you are beginning to see more patches that would be big enough to sustain farms.
A tower stands off the road as if in silent greeting. You raise your armor's arm and shout out a greeting, but receive no answer. As you approach you see these are slender buildings of stone and wood, perhaps a little too slender to make good fortifications, and from their windows float - stained and frayed at the bottom - a banner sporting three stalks of wheat inside a sun at the zenith; the mon of the city of Summer.
This, then, must have been the outer perimeter controlled by the city until recent times. Why it lost that ground, you could not say; but you know now that the city is very close, a few hour's walk only. You might be there by sunset if you push yourself a bit, probably more in the early night.
Looking around you to confirm your suspicions, you see indeed a second watchtower a great distance away to the east, across the river. And looking to the west, where the hills rise like soft waves… You do not see a watchtower. Instead, you see something stranger; a faint glow over the horizon, coming from some kind of artificial structure, a building or complex of some kind whose details you can't make out. That building would have been inside the perimeter controlled by the towers when they were manned, although some fair distance off to the west.
You ponder whether you've had enough of wandering off into the supernatural unknown with that castle, and whether you can afford to delay any longer. You've run out of food (with fish an unreliable addition at best), of drink other than water, and are looking more ragged every day, not a great first impression when introducing yourself to a lord. If you take a detour, you will certainly put another day between you and your arrival. And you'll probably learn why the city had to pull back when you get there. That said, there is a faintly glowing man-made structure only a couple hours away, and who knows what could be there?
[ ]Ignore the structure and head directly for Summer.
[ ]Head for that unknown place to investigate it.