Homura Nozomi The great Oni Smith
Homura Nozomi sighed for what seemed like the thousandth time as she trudged through the black ash wastes of the dark lands. She gazed at the tall mountain peaks of the world's edge mountains, and her goal was beyond them.
She ran a red hand through her thick, scraggly white hair, absentmindedly avoiding one of her long horns that sprouted from her forehead. Homura Nozomi wondered to herself why, in the name of the sun goddess and the goodness of rice, she was walking across one of the most treacherous lands in the world. Then she remembered that some arrogant and stubborn Samurai lords and others had burned down her forge in revenge for not making one of her masterpieces for him even after he had failed her tests.
Why was it so hard for humans to understand that she would not unleash powerful weapons upon the world in the name of bragging? Every time one of those fools walked in, they expected her to just give them something comparable to a force of nature that most would misuse.
Her craft was not at all safe if she wanted to make a sword that wielded the power of a typhoon. Her craft required her to find a typhoon or the subsequent force of nature on a certain day at a certain time with a lot of luck and preparation on the blade, and then she would have to syphon power while chanting the correct prayer mantra while the winds of magic blew strong.
From then and only then could she make the pre-prepared weapon runes light up, but add to the problem of an already dangerous process that the runes effectiveness and power were dictated by how close she was to the force of nature, and sometimes the process could fail for no reason or only half the runes would light, leading to an inferior product. Exceptions existed, of course, such as powerful earthquakes yet to be and super volcanoes, but those were extremely rare, and she was loath to tap into such sources and only did it once.
Homura Nozomi, in her opinion, thought that her less complex works were better and easier than her masterpieces, and she did not hate them. And her love for each one was equal to that of her flesh and blood children, but after the last one that she had made from lighting, it nearly cost her life. She had increased the difficulty of her tests and refused to do more mundane orders for the past twenty years. As an Oni, she had all the time in the world, and Homura Nozomi took that time to see her great-grandchildren in southern Nippon.
It did not help the moment that twenty years had passed and that fool of a samurai lord had been waiting outside her forge, demanding that she make a sword that could channel the power of a typhoon, and he wanted her absolute best. After all, she was renowned in the east for her channel smithing; her masterpieces were greatly coveted, and she had given all of the works to a worthy wilder.
Except for the hammer that she called The Promise of Ash that she used to make those other works as well, vaporising or shattering any monster that she encountered with the power of a dormant supervolcano and a sizable earthquake was not a laughing matter, even if its power waxed and waned at times. It was the greatest and most dangerous of her works that she had taken great pains to seal; its true potential was sealed to a tenth of its power, like the volcano its power had been drawn from.
But even without the hammer, she was more than capable of defending herself; her strength equaled that of an ogre from the mountains of mourn, and her natural toughness and resistance to poison and diseases made her a very unpleasant opponent if one discounted the other countless magical protections she had on her.
Especially important to her was her family's treasure, the neverending sake gourde, as the loss of that priceless item would be tragic in the extreme. As it allowed more than just a good drink, it could heal quite a bit of damage, but it could not replace body parts or ones ruined beyond reason, like a crushed arm, so relying on it to save you from foolishness was unwise.
But that was hardly the point, Homura Nozomi thought as she put one foot forward, sending up a small cloud of dust and ash. She had gone off on a tangent to herself; the dark lands had made her a bit more scatterbrained, and her mind wandered more than normal.
grumbling to herself as her predicament was the arrogant lords' fault who kept insisting that even after he had failed the test, a lowly Oni could refuse him. A powerful and successful lord like him, and a human at that, was her superior, and only her status as the greatest smith in the east stopped him from ordering his guards to cut her down where she stood. Homura Nozomi could still remember how her sharp teeth ground together in anger at the man's attitude, while the others had at least the decency to pretend to be respectful.
She, at that moment, did not care for her status as a lesser class and species in society, not after clawing her way up to where she was. And at that moment, Homura Nozomi, in a rare moment not since her youth, lived up to the legendary short temper of the Oni by bodily tossing the lord and his retinue out of her forge like ragdolls, slamming the door behind her.
After that, Homura Nozomi continued for a week before leaving her forge to acquire metal for one of her lesser orders. Only for her to return to her forge to find it being burned down by a band of samurai under the banner of the lord she had tossed out as well as others that she had dismissed who clearly held a grudge.
She had seen red and attacked the band of samurai howling in rage, laying low dozens of men in single swings with The Promise of Ash. Leaving pyroclastic ash and magma covering the earth in her wake. After that, the last man was gleefully smashed into a charred paste.
Homura Nozomi had spared no time in salvaging what she could before setting off, promising herself to never return to Nippon for three centuries, as by then all who wanted her works and those who would bind her to an anvil with magic would all be dead and their clan likely scattered to the winds by their enemies.
They would come looking for her eventually, and she was certain they would fall to their knees, begging for her to return in exchange for anything, just so she would only forge blades for Nippon. Or they would attempt to capture her after the begging, most likely before, but that was a problem for the future.
Besides, Homura Nozomi was getting tired of Nippon's constant warring and wanted to travel the world, which is why she was in the dark lands. While she had been wandering the west of Cathay in search of a challenge to her skills, she had sensed the faintest, fuzziest hint of her masterworks to the far west.
Homura Nozomi, foreseeing that a thef might steal her blades from her forge, had placed an enchanted lotus mark on any blade hilt that she had deemed a masterwork, along with a simple, charming pendant for the wilder she gave it to, so that the lotus mark would stay dormant. So she could eventually find them if they were stolen or lost when they finally surfaced, but the mark would not always activate.
And the pendant would sometimes fail at random, or the wilder would die; this had led to more than one funeral or supper being crushed by her, causing no end of embarrassment and awkward explanations.
These measures, however, did stop them from vanishing, and over time, a hundred and twelve of her works had gone missing over the centuries, either taken into exile or passed from owner to owner before vanishing beyond her ability to sense them.
Now that she could sense these blades, she only got an extremely vague direction from them, or it would cut out and she would have to guess. Such was the weakness of her work that it could be very fickle at times. Still, she could not allow her babies to lay in some monster's lair or in the lair of one she had not tested, as these nine certainly had such a fate befall them, and her pride as a smith would not allow them to suffer a fat, dull-witted monster using them as a toothpick or some vagabond to hold such potent tools.
But she would soon see that problem the moment she got out of the dark lands. While it had been fun to fight against the variety of denizens of the dark lands and discover new things about the world, The Promise of Ash certainly became calmer after realising a lot of its destructive power. Homura Nozomi was getting rather sick of eating charred goblins, flash-burned ork, and squished squig. The occasional troll too stupid to run away was a welcome break, but she wanted proper food, not monster meat.
Not to mention the bearded tusked things that smelt wrong, like their very spirits were awash with foulness; she had avoided them when she could.
But things were looking up for her, as in a few days she would be leaving the dark lands. But just then, as the thought crossed her mind, she heard wolves howling in the distance. Homura Nozomi sighed before taking a slug of sake and hefting her hammer, which thrummed with power. It looked like a wolf was coming for dinner tonight. At least it was something different.
