"Ooooooh!" Honoka said, her eyes going wide as she looked out across the vast expanse of magical mayhem below us.
"This is a mall," I said carefully. "Remember that you promised to stay right next to me."
"Of course!" she chirped, rolling a crit-fail on her Believability check.
"I'm serious," I said, taking her hand to physically restrain the urge to run off that was causing her to visibly quiver. "Right. Next. To. Me. Last thing we need is you running off and doing ninja stuff in front of a bunch of people with camera phones." I thought about the possibilities. "Or in any other way look weird," I added as a general catch-all.
She looked at me with a raised eyebrow, looked down at our linked hands, and looked up at me again.
"Is it weird for old guys to hold hands with fifteen-year-old girls?" she asked, her tone conveying that she knew the answer and was mocking me.
I sighed and let go of her hand. "Seriously, Honoka. You promised."
"Don't worry, Uncle Earl. I would never break a promise."
"At least Mari hasn't yet taught you to lie effectively," I grumbled. "This is such a bad idea."
She gave me an unrepentant grin that promised mayhem, mischief, and general misbehavior.
I winced and said nothing. What was there to say? Instead, I simply looked out over the mall and attempted to plot a safe course.
I wasn't quite sure how or why I had ended up in this moment. It was probably Mari's fault; Honoka had been whining at me for weeks to show her more of Earth and I had been pushing back. Earth was no longer my home, exactly, but it was still a place that I cared about and home to a lot of people that I cared about. Setting ninja magic loose upon it was only going to cause problems. Visions had been dancing in my head from the moment that Honoka first expressed interest in Earth. Mostly visions of my door being kicked down by men in black combat vests with great big guns who swept me away to a horrifying prison somewhere and tortured information out of me on how they could get their hands on these super soldier assassins.
Granted, they wouldn't be able to hold me. Still...
"Why is everyone so fat?" Honoka asked, breaking me out of my ruminations.
We were standing on the third floor mezzanine at the south end of the mall, looking out over the sweep of crass consumerist capitalism. The place was stuffed to the gills with a cross-section of America; grandparents with little ones, harried adults shopping for a gift or clothes or whatever in between other commitments, teenagers working hard to show how disaffected and unimpressed they were, and employees whose fixed smiles were the only thing restraining them from releasing the murderous impulses caused by interacting with retail customers and running amok in an orgy of horrifying yet entirely understandable slaughter. Nearly everyone involved in the scene had the build of a typical American, meaning that they ranged from 'swivel-chair spread / dad-bod mode enabled' to 'land whale in need of scooter'.
I pondered how to answer that. It wasn't a simple question—lobbyist-induced farm subsidies meaning that corn was so overabundant that people actively looked for ways to use it, which meant high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener being incredibly cheap while market competition drove inexpensive food to be sweeter, saltier, more intense. Puritan work ethic and exploitative capitalism causing overwork that meant most people had little energy for cooking, thereby driving consumption of those inexpensive and unhealthy foods. Decades of active assaults on public schooling by half of the government meaning that few people had sufficient information about nutrition. Food deserts pushing people away from produce and other healthy sustenance and towards the aforementioned obesity-makers.
"Well..." I said, thinking. "It's complicated. The short and oversimplified answer is that a lot of the food here is too sweet and people's lifestyles make it easy to eat too much and exercise too little."
"That's dumb. Why don't they just eat better and exercise more?"
I restrained a surge of anger. This place might not be my home anymore, but it was the place that had shaped me for most of my life. Hearing some bratty, entitled little—
Breathe.
Honoka had grown up with a degree of privilege unimaginable to most Americans, or even most Terrans. A favorite daughter of the richest, most powerful ninja clan, she had been showered with love and attention, given every material object and as much schooling as she could handle. Born into the lucky half a percent of superhumans, trained from birth to be above the common herd. Yes, attitudes towards civilians were slowly shifting, and the Gōketsu were probably the best clan for non-bigotry, but the fact still remained: ninja were superior to civilians in most measurable ways. Baseline stronger and more athletic physically, superhumanly strong when they wanted to be, and gifted with magic powers. How could they not see civilians as lesser? Arguments that all humans had intrinsic value simply because they did were a hard sell.
"Do you remember when you were seven and you asked your tutors why everyone spent the entire Warring Clans period fighting one another? Why they didn't simply skip all that and move to the Village Era and the Great Peace right away?"
"Sure."
"Your tutors told you that it was complicated and that the reasons for all that were the essence of the history and political theory classes that you would be studying for the rest of your time in the GED program."
"You're saying that it's like that?"
"I'm saying that it's like that: complicated."
"That's boring."
I let that go, because there was nowhere good that it could go. "What appeals?" I asked. "If you're hungry, we could hit the food court. If you want to browse stuff then there's a JCPenny at the far end. They've got a bunch of everything...clothes, jewelry, toys, sporting gear, that kind of stuff. There's a music shop just over there—"
"Ooh!"
"—aaand, she's gone," I said with a sigh as Honoka pitched over the railing and dropped.
With anyone else, I would have lunged forward in a panic and tried to save them despite the fact that they were out of reach before my brain even started to react. With Honoka, I didn't bother. She was a ninja, she was a Gōketsu, and it wasn't like a mere three-story drop was going to hurt her.
Sure enough, five feet from the ground, Honoka triggered the Reusable Rocket Boot seals on her shoes, slowing herself to a gentle landing. She raised a hand to wave frenetically as she trotted over to a group of teenagers sitting in the food court. They had taken over two of the larger tables, both of which were piled high in plastic trays covered in mostly, but not entirely, typical teenager fare—a stack of greasy fast food burgers and fries, but also a giant salad with chicken strips and hardboiled egg, and a bowl of something reddish that was either an Asian-fusion curry or a very strident tomato soup.
Every single head in the entire area snapped around to goggle at the physics-ignoring failed suicide of a bright-eyed young woman with a bouncy smile. There was a frozen moment that brought my heart into my throat...and then everyone moved on. Most of them were shaking their heads, undoubtedly telling themselves that they must not have seen what they thought they had seen. Some of them moved reluctantly, wanting to ask questions but unable to overcome social conventions about talking to strangers and deciding that it was better to simply move on.
I watched as Honoka arrived on the perimeter of the teenager group. They were, of course, staring.
I paused, analyzing the situation. I was obviously wearing my full combat rig, including the RRBs, because I wasn't an idiot. I wasn't expecting to be attacked, but the Chosen for the Grave world had a habit of trying to kill you without worrying too much about your state of expectation. The simple fact that I was back home on boring old Earth, home of absolutely zero electricity-spitting slash mind-controlling slash eyeball-eating monstrosities, had no bearing on my long-ingrained habit of preparation.
I could hot-drop after Honoka. Alternatively, I could circle around to the escalator at the midpoint of the mezzanine, run down, then run back to the food court. The first might get me there before she finished completely blowing our cover, at the cost of completely blowing our cover. The second would be less eye-catching but also slower. Both choices were terrible and would lead to disaster.
With a muffled curse, I turned and strode for the escalator as fast as I could manage without standing out.
I kept an eye on Honoka as I moved. She was on her feet, chatting animatedly with a seated group—four boys, two girls. One obvious couple based on the hormone-induced 'as much of me must be in contact with as much of you as possible at all times' seating arrangement. One of the boys and the uncoupled girl had been having a dance off; they had actual moves, which was an advantage of the new generation. A billion hours of dance tutorials and dance competition TickyTockies or whatever they were called meant that kids these days were much more able to cut a rug than those of my generation. We used to have to dance the way the gods intended—by shuffling awkwardly around like baby giraffes, trying to pretend we knew what we were doing.
I was sixty feet along the mezzanine when Honoka interjected herself into the dance off. She must have asked, because the girl stepped back and waved her in.
My niece, of course, went in all the way.
She took the moves she had seen the other girl doing and threw it in a blender with a bit of the Elemental Nations' idea of dancing, a few moves from the Goddess Forms a Bouquet taijutsu kata, and some of the general athleticism and flexibility of a young woman who had been doing ninja training literally since she could walk.
She also had absolutely no shame, and the poor young man she was...competing with? Showing up? Seducing? Whatever the hell she was doing, she was doing it a lot better than him.
The escalator was jammed with a bunch of double-wides in red ball caps, taking up so much room that I couldn't get past them. I had to stand there, jittering and bouncing as the mechanical stairs carried me veerrrry sslllooowwlyyy down to the first floor.
It took me a highly excessive four minutes to get from where I had started to the bottom of the escalator, with an insufferable amount of yet more time to get back to the teens if I stuck to a non-eye-catching walk. This felt like an eternity, as I watched Honoka finish her dance-off and plop down on the lap of a young cross-pollination of a theater kid and a hooligan: guyliner, all black clothes that included a black T-shirt with the logo of some (probably death metal) band I'd never heard of, black leather jacket, nasal bar, and three earrings in each ear and one eyebrow. He looked like a spiral-bound notebook.
Honoka saw me hustling up and her face fell for just an instant before shifting back into an aggressively vivacious smile.
"Hey, Uncle Earl!" she called. "Meet Denise, Skyler, Johnny, Tom, Rich, and Raven."
Raven, of course, was the one she was taking pains to ensure didn't fly up into the sky. By sitting on his lap.
There are moments of clarity in life. They feel like your subjective time has sped up so that an entire mental analysis can fly past, different opinions weighing one another, different actions being considered and picked through. Suddenly, I was having one of those.
I could do what I had instinctively intended. Act out the extreme version of the patriarchal, Puritan-esque social structure that I had instinctively internalized during my youth. Drag Honoka off 'before her virtue was compromised'. (Which would also play well with the 'do not let the existence of ninja magic get out into the world' agenda, come to think of it.)
Alternatively, I could be the Responsible Adult Chaperone. Sit down, engage the kids in conversation, learn who these new people were who were clearly going to become part of my niece's life if her expression was anything to go by. Bonus points: I could embarrass the hell out of Honoka in the process. That was fun in and of itself but it also seemed like a fair punishment for her running off on me.
Other alternatively, I could be The Cool Uncle. Give her space, let her make her own choices and her own mistakes. It was the riskiest course, the one most likely to reveal the existence of ninja and the Elemental Nations to the Earth world, but it was clear that I was going to have very little agency in that determination. Honoka was going to be coming back to Earth in the future, whether I liked it or not. She was not going to be bound to my side where I could keep her under wraps. And, being honest...did it actually, truly matter? If Honoka or any other Gōketsu ninja got captured by the men in black, I would open a rift inside their cell and pull them out. If I got captured...well, I was the sealmaster. The level of restriction necessary to keep me from escaping would be beyond anything earthly authorities would likely consider necessary. Even lacking any other materials, I could use my own blood to fingerpaint a rift-opening seal, either the one that would take me to the Seventh Path or to the Human Path. I had practiced them both to the point that in the span of fifteen seconds I could draw them, infuse them, and activate them. And I could do it while blindfolded. I had practiced all that specifically so that I could escape from any imprisonment.
I scratched my arm, fingers tapping in the subtle motions of Gōketsu battle code: Unexpected circumstances. No cover prepared.
Honoka was sitting crosswise on Raven's lap with her right arm around his shoulders, so her right hand was out of sight of the teens as she shaped the signs: Mission doable. I am confident.
I nodded to the teens. "Nice meeting you all." I looked to Honoka. "H—ey, I'm going to swing by the bookshop and then hit up the vinyl store." I pointed down the way to the vintage music store halfway down the mall. "See you there in thirty minutes." I had almost said her name and then realized that I didn't know if she had given them an alias, so I barely managed to redirect the first word.
"Sounds good!" she chirped.
"You've got your phone, right?" I asked, knowing perfectly well that she didn't since I had never gotten her a phone. Hadn't even had reason to explain the part they played in modern society.
"Oh..." she said, suddenly realizing that maybe she was overestimating her ability to bullshit through an entire culture that she knew almost nothing about.
"You left it at home again, didn't you?" I asked, rolling my eyes. "You would forget your own head if it weren't tacked on."
"Uncle Earl! Don't embarrass me!"
"Hey, that's my job. You. Raven, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Set a timer on your phone, ship her off when it pings. I've got stuff to do after the mall."
He looked at me in confusion, visibly wondering who this old fart was and why RavenScytheWielderDarknessDragonEmoDeath6969 (or whatever his stupid IRL gamer tag was) should listen to him.
I met his eyes and stretched out the tiniest hint of my aura, tracing a filament of fear across the wet flesh of his brain.
He jolted, face going pale, and scrambled his phone out of his pocket, almost dislodging Honoka in the process. He swiped through apps and menus, set the timer, and turned the phone to me so that I could verify it was running.
"Thanks," I said, offering him a friendly smile. "Have fun, y'all."
I sauntered off, wondering if I had just doomed two worlds to war, destruction, and cultural cross-contamination by boy bands and bad street theater respectively.
To Minori, her morning walk was a vital part of her daily routine. When she put on her boots, grabbed her walking stick, and went to stroll through the hills near the village, it became morning, just like how when she got tired of the day's work and took off her boots back in her little hut, it became night. A sense of routine, she'd found, was the most important part of getting by when you lived inside the Great Worm.
(It was also convenient in ways nobody else in the village had caught on to yet. Minori was in charge of the storehouse, and if she happened to have "gone home for the night" whenever that wastrel Sara was trying to borrow another saw she'd only lose, well, that was just unfortunate timing and nothing anyone could be blamed for.)
Shrubby was Minori's favourite hill. Unlike the other hills, with their delicious-smelling plants that made you see everything in shades of purple for half a Minori-day after you ate them, or their shiny rocks that you couldn't ever put down if you were dumb enough to pick them up, Shrubby just had flesh shrubs–like shrubs, but made out of flesh, nothing more to it. It creeped other people out to no end, which was hilarious to watch and usually meant she had somewhere she could reliably go for some peace and quiet.
Today, she was in the middle of taking a break on Shrubby, staring out vaguely at the upward rivers in the distance, when a sudden groan made her spin around. She hefted her thwacking stick with menace.
Luckily, it wasn't the shrubs coming alive. That hadn't happened but the once, and Minori was pretty sure she knew what she'd done wrong that time. No, the groan wasn't coming from no shrub. It was coming from a fallen girl who, in all fairness, wasn't particularly shrub-shaped at all.
"A newcomer?" Minori grunted, kissing her peaceful morning walk goodbye.
She watched the girl lever herself to her feet, looking as dazed and confused as they all did at first. The girl unthinkingly leaned against a flesh shrub to steady herself, then recoiled when she felt it go squish, and nearly fell over again.
"Tough luck dying with no clothes on," Minori said. "That's going to get inconvenient fast if you decide to go exploring."
The girl looked down at herself, gave a panicked squeak, and turned redder than a blood vole that had just finished feeding. She hurriedly covered herself up with her hands.
Minori rolled her eyes. "I've raised six daughters," she said. "You ain't got nothing I ain't seen before."
"Triple negative," the girl muttered. From her tone, Minori could tell it was a foreign curse.
Minori graciously ignored it, and even shrugged off her favourite grey shawl to hand it to the newcomer (who wrapped herself in it gratefully). Minori being built the way she was, there was enough shawl for five skin-and-bones girls like her under there if they were willing to huddle up.
"So how'd you end up dying without a shred of–"
Minori stabbed her own foot with the talking stick before she could finish that sentence. It wasn't as if she couldn't guess what happened. There was a reason she always hid her daughters when the ninja came calling.
"Come on," she said instead. "I'll take you back to the village. I know we've got spare clothes in the storehouse. It's my business to check them every day."
Minori reached out for the girl's hand, but she flinched away from the touch, only confirming Minori's guess.
"Sorry, sorry," Minori muttered. "What's, uh, what's your name, lass? Mine's Minori. Just that, on account of how my village didn't care none for that fancy two-name business everyone puts so much stock in. It's not like anyone's going to confuse me with another Minori."
The girl frowned. "I… I cannot remember." She tensed. "Why can I not remember my name?"
For a few seconds, she just looked down at the veiny ground, expression troubled. Minori gave her time to pull herself together.
"I apologise," the girl said, meeting her eyes for a second before looking away. "I have a name; I am certain of it. But my entire memory feels like it is filled with fog."
"It happens from time to time," Minori allowed. "Dying can shake you up real bad, especially if it's, you know, unexpected. Sometimes your wits need a little time to unshake afterwards."
"Dying?" the girl repeated as she'd just been told the daimyo was coming to visit her village personally, and he was bringing soldiers.
"You're dead," Minori said plainly. "Sorry to see it happen to a kid so young. Welcome to the belly of the Great Worm."
"Is that a metaphor?" the nameless girl asked uncertainly.
Minori gave a dismissive wave. "I ain't no good with priest-speak," she said. "You died, and your soul got swallowed by the Great Worm instead of going straight to the wheel of rebirth. That's all. The Great Worm eats memories, you see. It's a parasite-god from the dawn of time. It digests us all bit by bit as our memories drain away into its gut. But in return, we get to exist a little longer, even if it's in a daft place like this. Then, when we've had enough, we can let go and move on, and there ain't nothing the Great Worm can do to stop us."
"That's impossible," the girl said, sounding more shaken than any of the newcomers Minori had greeted before (not that she could blame her, with a death like that). "I cannot be dead. You are mistaken."
Minori rolled her eyes again. Young ones always thought they'd live forever. Then they spurned the ancient rules and walked into the wood like Arisa's fool boy, and by the time they found out they were wrong, there were only gnawed bones left.
"I hear that all the time," she said, not without sympathy. "'I know my mushrooms, and that one was fine.' 'My brother's a man of honour who'd never stab me in the back over a girl.' 'I'm the strongest in the village; no way I lost a fight with some ninja half my size.' You can sit there and spend your time pretending if that's what stokes your fire, but sooner or later there ain't nothing for it but to suck it up and start seeing the world as it is."
She poked one of the flesh shrubs with her pointing stick by way of illustration. The shrub jiggled the way they always did. The girl shuddered, and Minori mentally kicked herself.
"It cannot be," the girl insisted. "But, admittedly, I do not remember why. Is this truly the Pure Land?"
"It's the belly of the Great Worm," Minori corrected her. "The place people go if they die and nobody prays over their body before the soul leaks out of the mouth at midnight. I got clonked on the head by a roof timber in an earthquake, so I guess ain't no one bothered to dig my corpse out in time, the ingrates."
"By that criterion, most people should find themselves inside your hypothetical worm," the girl objected. "I appear to be versed in matters of mortality. Most cultures begin to ritually pray for the deceased during the funeral period, which is rarely initiated on the day of death. Before then, the shock of encountering a corpse and the need to initiate proper storage and/or investigation procedures mean spontaneous private prayers are unlikely to take place in physical proximity–and that is assuming it is discovered with the necessary timing to begin with!"
The girl talked like a scribe, only confirming Minori's theory further. Everybody knew the cities were dens of vice and depravity, and worse, places where ninja turned up all the time.
"And most everyone does," Minori agreed. "You get people from all sorts of countries here, places I ain't never even heard of–and there wasn't a one who knew about the Great Worm and how important it is to pray over a body in time. That's proof, that is."
"The term is confirmation bias," the girl said coolly, "or perhaps it is an instance of the anthropic principle."
She took a look around, taking in the purplifying plants on the next hill over, with their gentle red and blue glow. "Regardless, I cannot remain here. My death is certainly some kind of cosmic error, and I can feel that there are loved ones who need me."
Minori sighed, already sensing trouble ahead. There was nothing worse than teenage girls with big ideas and too much time on their hands. The kami themselves knew it, which was why they had invented drink, gossip, and pretty boys.
"God or not, ain't no way out of a critter's belly except out the other end. Many people have looked, and we'd all know by now if they'd found anything. Don't worry, it may seem rough at first, but you'll get used to it. We all do. By the time you've lost enough memories that it's time to pass on, you'll be ready."
The girl gave her a sudden icy look that pierced her like a knife. Minori felt an inexplicable shiver travel all the way down to her bones at the disapproval of a girl a third her age. It was worse than the time she told her Mami that being hopelessly in love was no reason to marry a boy with no prospects (and twenty years later, she was proved right).
"If my allotted time is limited," the girl declared, "that is only the more reason to use every second to the fullest. That is the principle I have lived by, and it is the principle by which I will live again. I certainly cannot dawdle while either some hypothetical deiform annelid or the natural cruelty of fate conspires to devour the very essence of my being. There are people who need me."
She paused.
"But first, clothes. Emphatically clothes. I will also trade intellectual or manual labour for maps of the region, such supplies as a traveller may require in the Pure Land, and answers to a variety of questions. Minori, as you have displayed a basic degree of probity, I would appreciate it if you served as my guide for the initial acclimatisation period."
Yes, Minori decided. This one was going to be trouble. Then again, if Minori hadn't been prepared to support a series of very smart idiot girls through a variety of terrible but entertaining life (or unlife) choices, she wouldn't have had five more daughters after the first.
Hazō would call the sky overcast, except it clearly wasn't. He'd invented skywalkers. He knew that a grey sky was just a thick layer of clouds sitting like a blanket over the world. He knew that clouds sat at different heights, and he'd even gotten a sense for how high those clouds would be. He remembered (for now) how sometimes, while attending to his business as a Clan Head on the old Gōketsu Estate, he would sometimes see the thick cloud cover hanging low and feel suffocated as if trapped in a cave too low to walk comfortably. And he remembered how on other, clearer days, he would see a cloud that he just knew was miles and miles in the sky and had to resist the urge to abandon his duties and go run with the clouds and winds.
He never had skipped his duties just to enjoy a run. Did he regret that? Was the world a better place for the fact that he signed off on a handful more pieces of administrative trivia?
With that intuition he'd honed, he could tell that the sky in the Pure Lands was tall. If there were clouds making up that infinite gray expanse, they were higher than any cloud he had ever seen. It was the opposite of suffocating – Hazō nearly felt a thrill when he looked upwards at the sheer feeling of infinite space above him. As if, were gravity reversed, he could fall forever up into the sky without ever brushing against anything more real than rushing air.
The infinite mountains almost creeped up on them. They must have been gradually fading out of the distance, because at some point, Hazō looked up and saw them. He stopped dead.
"Yeah," Keiji said, once he'd noticed Hazō's pause and doubled back. "They sure are something, aren't they?"
They were dozens of miles away from the mountains' base, so Hazō couldn't see any fine details. He could only see their shape – rising and rising and rising. True to what his companions had said, he could see no peak. Instead, the mountains just kept getting taller and taller, receding into the distance, until the haze of the air itself kept Hazō from perceiving them anymore. He could already tell they were impossibly tall though – even from this distance, Hazō had to lean his head back to lock his eyes on their peaks.
"Hey, neat thing about these mountains," Keiji said. "Normal mountains, you can look at them straight on when you're far away, but you need to look up when you get closer. These ones? There's no top that gets any closer. If you're looking up the slope, you look up by the same amount whether you're miles out or right next to them. Neat, isn't it?"
Like with clouds, Hazō was familiar with the thin haze that air carried. Even when skywalking on clear days, he couldn't see forever. The air eventually grew misty, bluish white with enough distance and kept him from seeing the whole world from a skytower.
"Are they really infinite?" Hazō said. "How do you know, if we can't see the whole slope?"
"How tall do you think that mountain is?" Keiji asked. "If there's a thousand miles of slope, it doesn't matter to me if it's ten or a hundred thousand miles in total. I ain't getting up it either way."
"But that's not infinite," Hazō said.
"It is," Keiji said. "All that matters this side of life is what we see and experience, and these mountains are infinite to me, to Miki, and now to you. Look, if you want to run a mile or two up there and see for yourself, feel free. Not like we're in any rush to get to the shrine."
"It's fine," Hazō said, still looking out into the distance. "Sorry for stopping. Let's go."
o-o-o
Night never came in the Pure Lands, but arriving at the base of the mountains was as good a reason to camp as any. Miki snored loudly in a hollow in the ground, while Keiji fiddled with some bushes he'd ripped out of the slopes a little ways up the mountain (technically, zero percent of the way up) to start a small fire for them. Hazō, meanwhile, mixed some of his prepared charcoal with water in yet another attempt at making chakra ink. Keiji had loaned Hazō his bronze bondmark while they were camping, and Hazō was pretty sure that bronze and brass were both made using copper, so the metals might be similar enough for the bondmark to work in the chakra-ink production ritual.
Hazō went through the steps, rubbing the round end of the bondmark against his belt, spoke his chant, then blew over the surface of the ink. He tapped his finger against the surface of the ink and attempted to infuse it with his chakra. It didn't…
Huh? As Hazō stopped pushing chakra into the ink, he swore he felt a faint fading sensation. Like the ink had taken the chakra for a moment, then immediately lost it. Except… that couldn't be the case. The chakra hadn't actually left Hazō, had it?
Shit. Was the ink taking Hazō's chakra, then getting immediately drained by the afterlife? He'd thought that it would last longer than that, given that his seals had lasted for several minutes during his last (voluntary) visit to the afterlife, but those were infused seals rather than pure chakra ink.
No, he hadn't actually felt the ink get infused. The ink didn't feel like it had the capacity to take his chakra charge… except he didn't think he'd hallucinated that sensation of the ink's chakra fading. Maybe the ink had a capacity to hold chakra, except that capacity was much lower than it should be because of him butchering the ritual and using his own shitty ink and-
"Hey!" Keiji called out. "Watch out!"
Hazō leapt to his feet, sending-
-tamping down his instincts to send chakra through his system, instead turning with agonizing slowness to see what Keiji was looking at up the slope.
It looked almost like a tumbleweed, if a tumbleweed were made of strips of paper thinner than his little finger, and those strips of paper were constantly branching, merging, and writhing like the surface of a boiling pot.
"Paper wraith!" Keiji said, pulling out his machete, while Miki shook herself awake and rolled to her feet. "Absorbs violent memories. Don't bother talking. This looks like a strong-"
And then it was upon them.
Hazō ran forward to intercept the creature before it could fall upon the civilians, unclipping his Pangolin-claw gauntlets along the way. Keiji was using his machete, so Hazō needed a blade as well. This creature didn't seem like the sort he could punch through.
The writhing mass of paper almost shied away from his steps, tendrils folding inwards. Then, it changed, strips of paper suddenly moving like they were wrapping around a solid object, and Hazō got the faint impression of a square-jawed young man made out of origami in the middle of a storm. The man thrusted forward, a spear of paper strips appearing in his hands as he struck, and Hazō raised a gauntlet to parry – before realizing he didn't know if he could parry this attack at all.
He ducked out of the way instead. The spear thrust was slow, like a civilian's, and Hazō had rolled to his knees before the spear was even retracting back into that storm of paper. He needed to kill this thing somehow, so Hazō struck out, slashing his gauntlets through where the young man's leg would have been. The gauntlets passed through the storm of paper like it was nothing, paper strips flowing around the claws like they weren't there, but when it hit the man's leg, Hazō heard a distinctive tearing of paper as he ripped through the man's leg.
So it wasn't vulnerable except when it took form to attack. Good to know. Hazō leapt back, watching the rolling storm. Were the paper strips any shorter now? Was there any obvious sign of damage? He didn't see it "leaking" paper like blood, but the attack had to have done something. Otherwise Keiji wouldn't have gotten out his machete.
Hazō ran back in, and the wraith took form again. A teenager of indiscriminate gender put their hands together, then lances of paper shot out of its "mouth" and expanded fractally through the air.
Hazō grinned. He could take a genin. He slashed through the incoming attack, twisting and moving through the space it didn't occupy to get into its heart and rip the pieces of paper apart, before he crouched and leaped at the paper-genin, tearing through them from their shoulder to their opposite waist.
That had definitely done something. The paper strips Hazō had cut fell on the wind for a few seconds before rejoining the storm, and Hazō thought he saw a shimmer of light in the air before the storm reshaped again, this time into a tall, skinny man wielding a cudgel. The man didn't even have time to swing before Hazō tore his arm off, then slashed through his chest.
The wraith backed off, forming into the shape of a squat samurai-looking man, but Hazō pounced forward like a predator, slashing it to pieces. He was in the heart of the storm, whirling as he cut down his foes, and this wraith would soon regret-
The paper strips swarming around him didn't make another fully humanoid figure. Instead, they formed hands – one already wrapped around his wrists, the other at his neck, and Hazō found himself being thrown through the air. Hazō had a moment to appreciate the throw from his mid-air position as he saw the wraith reforming yet again, this time into a tall ninja wielding a sword, its point barely an inch from Hazō's heart.
Hazō slammed against the ground, sharp stones digging into his back. He knew he should have had the breath knocked out of him, and that he would get stabbed a moment later, but something else happened. A memory came to him.
A sparring exercise in Mist's Academy. He'd been thrown to the ground, but he wasn't a civilian who had to lie there and die under his enemy's blade.
Hazō's body moved almost on its own as he kicked against a boulder with chakra repulsion, leaping horizontally along the ground and gritting his teeth against the innumerable stones scraping against his back. The blade passed between his legs and he kicked up, knocking the sword out of the wraith's hands, even as his hands went over his head to pivot him up.
He flipped back to his feet, and in the same motion ran his gauntlets through the length of the wraith's form, from groin to skull.
The wraith burst into strips of paper that fled back up the slopes.
Hazō looked around, but there were no more threats. Apart from those couple scrapes, no one had been hurt. He felt empty. After a moment, he realized it was the silence. After a fight, he expected to hear his heart pounding in his ears, but he was dead. His heart didn't beat.
Keiji was standing back protectively with Miki, his machete up, which he lowered as he saw the wraith fleeing.
"Sage's infinite blessings, Hazō, that was incredible," Keiji said. "You were like a whirlwind of death. I thought for sure we'd be going back home after that."
Hazō shook his head. "That thing… you said it was made out of violent memories?"
"Sure," Keiji said. "You saw it. A million moments of killing and death, all bundled up into one little thing. Most of the monsters here aren't that dangerous – I think a lot of them are actually people's memories of chakra beasts reforming – but paper wraiths are a bad one and that one looked pretty strong."
"Oh!" Miki said. "Maybe it absorbed some of Daiji's memories. Daiji also did a lot of fighting in his life, so he probably had more than enough to make a paper wraith of his own. Wait, what am I saying? Are you okay, Hazō?"
"I'm fine," Hazō said. "I scraped my back a little bit, but that's all."
"Oh, well that won't do," Miki said. "Take your shirt off and come over here. I have some things to ease the pain. It wouldn't do for you to be wincing the entire rest of the journey, now would it?"
Alertness
Paper Wraith: 3d20 = 19 + 3 + 20 = 42
Hazō: 36
Keiji: 26
Miki: 15
Paper Wraith
This monster is totally indiscriminate. It just attacks Hazō because he's closest.
It attacks not with normal FtD rules, but by rolling 8d20 (for this particular paper wraith, numbers might change for paper wraiths in general), and picking the 5 lowest numbers to add together (anydice: "output [lowest 5 of 8d20]"), with a weapons rating of [1d6 - 1]. It doesn't have a single score for any skill, as it is an amalgamation of memories from many different sources (because of static initiative, I won't be changing its initiative every round). I could add Fate Dice on top of this, but this is already random enough.
Paper Wraith: [1, 8, 1, 3, 14, 20, 2, 2] = 9
Hazō (Athletics): more than that
Hazō easily dodges!
Hazō
Hazō has no clue how this creature operates, but will attack it with Taijutsu because what else is he going to do? He's not going to spend any chakra because the creature's initial attack seemed limp. He will equip his Pangolin gauntlets, since Keiji brought out a bladed weapon, so it seems wise to follow the more experienced person's lead.
Hazō would deal 12 stress and annihilate it… but the Paper Wraith takes quarter-damage from non-energy attacks (and none from bludgeoning, so good thing Hazō used the gauntlets), meaning that it's only got its stress track filled!
Keiji
Uh. Shit, almost forgot that Hazō was a ninja there. He's moving pretty fast… maybe just stay out of his way?
Miki
Ditto.
Paper Wraith
This monster has no conception of being damaged, or even really of losing fights. It keeps attacking Hazō, who will counterattack this time.
Close, little wraith, but close isn't good enough.
Ah, combat is so much easier to run without all the seals and bullshit. This scratched the itch a little, but really, the goal is to get back into proper FATE-y combat, where it's less about stacking buffs and more about creating and discovering Aspects, interweaving narrative and gameplay in a way that's more interesting than "and then I turned on my Banshees". Hopefully I'll get a bit closer to that in the next combat.
o-o-o
They saw the shrine before they next made camp, more than a mile up the slope of the infinite mountains. Miki had described it as "blue and black", but Hazō felt that those words did the shrine a disservice. Even the torii gate outside the shrine was a work of art – each post painted in an indigo so rich that Hazō thought he could see the gradations of a setting sun and waxing starlight in its colors, topped by a crossbeam so black that Hazō couldn't even perceive its shape. Miki forbade them from passing under the center of the beam, so Hazō got to see the post in even more detail, and it didn't even seem painted. The wood simply seemed to have that infinitely rich color on its own.
They passed through the gate, bowing as they did, and found a small basin of water waiting for them. Miki seemed to know what to do with it, washing her hands and anointing herself before stepping onwards.
The shrine itself sat on a leveled section of mountain, though Hazō could imagine no one who would have put in the effort to do this construction in such a remote part of such an esoteric dimension. Maybe it had simply… appeared this way.
The shrine's body was small by the standards of the Hagoromo's grand temples in Leaf. It would perhaps contain a half-dozen rooms inside it. A long courtyard lay before the shrine, paved with three-meter-square gray stones. Along that courtyard, a number of small gray pillars had been planted periodically, and a bald man knelt in front of one of them.
Hazō led the way to the man, passing a handful of pillars as he did. Each had a small, carved idol on top of it, clearly placed there by another worshipper, and messages written along its length.
He saw an idol of a woman, perhaps rising from an ocean. Underneath it, messages were scrawled: "May the oceans reclaim all that is here," "You fed me well in life," "Akito," and more scratchings that Hazō couldn't read as he passed by.
An idol of a great serpent, raising its head up to strike. "Wretched fool that I am." "I deserved this." "Destroy them all, as you destroyed me."
An idol of a cloaked figure. "Let me be avenged." "Survive, where we could not." "Remember me."
Hazō paused at one. He recognized the tall, bearded man with his cloak and crescent-moon staff – a common depiction of the Sage of the Six Paths across the Elemental Nations. The scratchings beneath were denser than on any pillar so far, and Hazō could barely make out any words. Some had taken to carving their words into the stone to make them last. "Protect my children"?
The bald man – no woman, by the shape of her face and body – stood as they approached. She was ancient, her face sagging with folds of skin, and her earlobes hung equally low under the weight of square-cut carmine stones. She wore long monks' robes, and Hazō couldn't help but tense slightly as he saw the sword at her belt.
She clearly noticed his reaction. "A ninja?" she asked.
Hazō forced himself to relax and offer his hand. "I'm Gōketsu Hazō. It's nice to meet you."
"I do not give my name so freely," she said, tone aloof. "But I am glad to meet you."
"Do you know anything about this shrine?" Hazō asked.
The woman shrugged. "I know less and less every day. Some things don't change between life and death, I suppose. About this shrine…"
She pointed. "It's over there. It's worth going in and seeing the being in its heart. The Prince of Bitter Nights, he calls himself. There are shrine guardians. Treat the shrine well, and they won't bother you in the slightest."
"There's really a shrine kami?" Miki asked. "Can we talk to him?"
The woman chuckled. "You can talk to him. You can also talk to any old rock or tree, girl. He's sleeping – or drowsing, at least. If you talk to him, he might talk back about the same as those rocks. He speaks sometimes, but I didn't make any sense of his babbling." She cut a wry grin at Hazō. "Maybe he doesn't bother speaking to people as unimportant as myself. A ninja might wake him up a little more."
"How did you know about this place?" Hazō asked.
"It's pretty visible, isn't it?" the woman said.
"And how did you know the shrine kami's name?"
"Mothers' blood, boy, I went in the shrine!" the woman said. "Don't grill me for things when you can poke your head in and see things for yourself!"
She gestured down the mountain. "Look, there's a settlement down that way. Maybe a dozen miles and around the bend. They send people up here occasionally, but it's not too many. Not too many dead appear around here for whatever reason. Now, this place is much too crowded for me. Enjoy your worship."
She promptly started walking away down the mountain path out of the shrine.
Hazō took a moment to inspect the idol she'd been kneeling at: a tall, leafy tree that looked much like the ancient oaks in Hidden Leaf. The messages beneath it were illegible. Some had been scratched out, maybe even by her sword.
"She seemed strange," Hazō said.
Keiji shrugged. "I've seen stranger."
o-o-o
Miki and Keiji started their way up the stairs to the shrine while Hazō circled the building. Hazō's eye for architecture was lacking (he had never actually figured out design plans for the new Gōketsu Estate, had he?), but he could tell that the shrine had been excellently constructed in an ancient style. Something about it felt just right – as if this were the kind of thing that the Hagoromo and the various priest castes had been imitating and caricaturing for centuries.
The building was cold. Even approaching it made Hazō feel a chill, and placing his hand against a wall felt like touching a kunai left out in winter – it robbed the heat from his skin instantly.
The roof tiles still bore that incomprehensible black color, darker than the darkest night, that made it hard to tell the shape of them, their borders, or anything at all beyond that they were there. The outer walls of the shrine were made of that indigo wood. Hazō looked closer, pressing his face almost to the wooden panels, and in between the grains and whorls of the wood, he thought he saw faint, glimmering patches of white, like stars hidden in the night sky.
A couple of the rooms had tiny, square windows to the outside, and Hazō peeked in, walking up the frigid walls to do so. One had a fountain of water, with a handful of coins glimmering in an intermediary basin before the fountain spilled out into a full bath. By its sound alone, the water was probably on the verge of freezing. The other room was totally unadorned but for the simple stone square resting on the wooden planks with a circle carved into its center.
Eventually, Hazō had to go in. He stepped up the stairs. They didn't creak or even bend under his weight. A pair of flickering yellow paper lanterns hung by the door, but more notable was the shrine guardians. Two men, each easily two meters tall, stood by the shrine's doors, wearing eldritch-looking suits of black-and-indigo armor. Each carried a naginata with a pair of red tassels hanging from just below the blade.
Miki and Keiji had walked between the guardians, so Hazō tried to do the same, only to stop suddenly as the two figures swiftly moved to cross their spears.
"You may not enter the shrine," a voice said. Hazō felt a cold wind pass over him and frowned slightly. The armor didn't have a normal faceplate – instead, the voice came through a mask painted with the visage of a laughing horned demon, white and cerulean in its cruel mirth. His fellow didn't speak, instead simply gazing down at Hazō with a mask depicting a weeping ghost.
Hazō looked them up and down quickly. They had definitely moved faster than a civilian could to bar his entry, and now that they were in front of his face, Hazō could see that their speartips seemed to darken the world behind them slightly, as if they were sucking in light.
Their armor… Hazō blinked. The demon-faced armor was empty. He could see right through it – and the ghost-faced one as well. Neither set of armor had a human inside of it. These guardians were animated suits of armor that moved on their own accord? The armor was scratched and scuffed in several places, clearly ancient, and Hazō caught a glimpse of scratches where their joints met – thin and precise as if made by a blade.
They didn't move, not even faint shuffles or the rising and falling of their chests as they barred Hazō's way.
"Is there something I can do to enter the shrine?" Hazō asked.
"Your kind will never be permitted to enter the shrine," the demon-faced guardian said, voice echoing out without its mask moving. "You inherited the Sage's legacy, then squandered and corrupted it. You carry all of his sins and none of his virtues."
"Our kind… being ninja?" Hazō asked.
The guardian did not respond, though Hazō thought he heard a faint whine from the ghost-faced guardian.
"Can I petition the kami of the shrine for entry?" Hazō ventured.
"You may not petition the kami to enter this shrine," the demon guardian said.
"My friends are in there already, speaking with the kami," Hazō asked. "If they convince the kami that I should be let in, will you let me in?"
"No," the demon guardian said. "The only way you may enter the shrine is by renouncing the Sage's tainted gift."
"Do you mean I should spend all my chakra? Or that I should become a civilian somehow?"
The demon-faced guardian did not respond. Again, the ghost-faced guardian whined softly.
"Right, good talk," Hazō said, reaching down and unhooking his Pangolin gauntlets. He put them on, then paused. "Is it fine if I cast ninjutsu outside the shrine?"
"Your corruption cannot touch the shrine," said the demon-faced guardian.
So the shrine was immune to ninjutsu? Or maybe immune to damage altogether. Probably the latter, based on the way the thin stair slats hadn't bent under his weight. Whatever, he didn't intend to damage the shrine itself. He still wanted to talk to the shrine kami. He just needed the guards out of the way.
Hazō backed down the stairs a couple steps. He definitely didn't want to get nicked by those strange blades with their inverted light. Hazō wanted to use Pangolin Earth Armor, but it cost so much chakra… better to use Ghost Scales. Pantokrator's Hammer was a more chakra-efficient form of chakra-boosting, so he'd use that too. He looked around. There were no convenient Substitution targets in range. He'd be doing this entirely hand-to-hand, then.
Hazō's hard-fought chakra streamed out of him into a shell of chakra-armor, filling his body with buzzing energy. The guardians' armor was scratched, but not cracked or dented. They might be impervious to damage, same as the shrine. Those scratches in the armor chinks looked like sword markings – maybe the old lady had pulled them apart like splitting a crab by its joints? He'd use the Ghost Scale claws till they ran out, then switch to his gauntlets.
He bounded up the stairs in two massive leaps then fell upon the shrine guardians.
They raised their naginatas to meet him, so they were clearly intelligent enough to recognize his attack. He landed in front of them, then leaped to the porch ceiling, flipping midair and adhering to it. One of the guards – Ghost, Hazou decided – was taken aback, but the other, Demon, snapped its spear up to slash at him. Hazō jumped again to a pillar to the side. Ghost was only starting to look up when Hazō took it in the side, prying his claws of shimmering energy into the cracks of its armor.
Hazou felt an icy chill blunted by the armor construct, then he got the gauntlets in the crack and twisted. He felt resistance, then a snap as something inside broke, and the armor's vambrace and gauntlet fell off. Inside, he saw only another void, absorbing-
Shit, the other guardian! Hazō ducked, but too slowly, and Demon's naginata slammed into his head, throwing him to the ground. He was alive – well, not really – but his Ghost Scales had popped to absorb the blow. Ghost tried to stab down at the prone Hazō one-handed, but Hazō rolled out of the way and snatched a kunai from his belt, jamming it in a gap in Ghost's leg. He was forced back to a shrine wall as Demon slashed at him.
They were moving oddly, Hazō noted. He thought he recognized the motions. They thought they were faster than they actually were, like an old ninja trying a dodge he knew he could have done in his prime. They'd clearly degraded at different rates too – the ghost-masked guardian, especially down an arm, was much slower than the demon-masked one. Which meant Demon was the main threat.
But wait, no other part of the shrine seems to have degraded with age. Something else must be causing them to degrade.
Hazō didn't have an eternity to think, because Demon was stabbing at him again, and Hazō danced back along the shrine walls. It was fast, but Hazō was faster. He could escape into the shrine, but then he'd be trapped. If there were more of these things in there, he'd be toast.
He needed some advantage to get a clean attack off.
The lanterns!
Hazō leaped back to the ceiling. Come on… There!
Demon slashed outwards with its naginata, and Hazō released his chakra adhesion to drop out of the way. The naginata slashed through the rope holding the paper lantern in place, and it started to fall. Hazō kicked off the guardian's breastplate, then flipped midair to land on the far pillar and punched the falling lantern back at Demon.
Demon slashed through the lantern. A mistake. It burst, oil suddenly spreading out in a conflagration as Hazō grit his teeth and leapt forward to jam his kunai in the slot in the armor's neck. He got it in, prying to rip the thing's head off, but he gasped at the sudden and intense cold of its torso. Demon let go of its naginata with one hand and grabbed Hazō by the shoulder and thrusted him away with inhuman strength. Hazō tried to reorient midair but the guardian had thrown him way faster than he'd thought possible. He hit the shrine wall hard and didn't latch on, instead falling to the ground. He only saw the naginata an instant before it struck and twisted to have the blow glance off his ribcage instead of ripping through his guts.
Good thing it was one-handing, he thought. If that had been a strong, two-handed thrust, it might have gone right through him. He only realized a moment later that his skin and ribs felt absolutely frozen where the blade had passed through his shirt.
Hazō's maneuvering had split the guardians, and now Ghost slashed down at him. Hazō sidestepped the slash and kicked it in the chest. It barely stumbled – the guardians weren't just strong, but way heavier than they had any right to be – but it did stumble, and Hazō took the opportunity to dive at its leg and jam his kunai in there properly. A moment of work later, and Ghost collapsed to its knees as Hazō ripped its greave off, and with it, its whole foot.
Hazō spun and stood. That one wasn't a threat now. That just left…
The oil fire on the stronger shrine guardian was going out, extinguished by that agonizing cold emanating from the armor and spears. A shimmering light – chakra? – swirled around the naginata's tip. A moment later, that light was absorbed, and the guardian's crooked headpiece shifted and corrected itself. It lowered the naginata to point at Hazō's chest.
Had it healed with chakra, his chakra, somehow?
Shit. He'd put his all into that attack and only gotten himself cut. He couldn't win like this.
Luckily, he was a ninja. He kicked to the wall, then one giant leap took him a dozen meters from the shrine. After a few more strides, he turned to see the lead guardian watching him with its spear extended, but not chasing him.
Well, he'd gotten away. He looked around, but there were no more threats. This shrine was going to be a tougher nut to crack than he'd expected.
At the start of the encounter, Hazō has the opportunity to notice critical details about the shrine guardians. More results with every 10 points, maxing out at 60.
Hazō (Alertness): 36 + 12 = 48
10: The shrine guardians moved at faster-than-civilian speed to bar the way
20: The shrine guardians' speartips seem to suck in light
30: The shrine guardians' armor is empty
40: The shrine guardians' armor has scratch marks on the inner parts of their joints, suggesting that they can be defeated by prying them apart
Remaining details can be discovered narratively, or through Maneuvers using Examination.
Shrine Guards:
"Animated Armor"
[...not yet discovered…]
"Fragile Animation"
3 points of ablative armor against physical damage until this Aspect is discovered and the opponent uses some attack that can disassemble the armor itself (e.g. prying it apart)
[...not yet discovered…]
"Void Naginata"
Weapons:2
If it deals stress, steals 10 CP per stress inflicted from the target.
Heals 1 stress per 20 CP stolen.
Can heal a Mild Consequence for 60 CP or a Moderate for 120 CP.
"Icebound Ancient"
3 box stress track
No Severe Consequence slot.
[...not yet discovered…]
[...not yet discovered…]
Shrine Guard 1 ("Demon"; better condition):
Weapons: ??
Athletics: ??
Alertness: ??
Shrine Guard 2 ("Ghost"; more degraded):
Weapons: ??
Athletics: ??
Alertness: ??
Initiative: Hazō initiates combat, so he's first, then the two shrine guardians in order. While GS gives a Taijutsu bonus, buffstacking rules means he can only get a bonus from one source here, which in this case will mainly be PKH since it's a much bigger bonus.
Hazō (pre-combat)
Cast Ghost Scales
Mechanically, try to create an Aspect "Death from Above the Left!" for bouncing off the ceiling at an unexpected angle on his approach up last round. This will make a tag if he beats the guardians with Athletics against their Alertness. It's not worth spending chakra on boosting/PKHing this
Hazō deals 1 + 1 = 2 stress. SG2's stress track is already at 2 boxes, so the damage rolls up to the third box, filling out SG2's stress track! Further damage will inflict at least a Moderate, and four or more points of stress will destroy it!
Hazō
Hazō could definitely beat down SG2, but the stronger SG1 is rather threatening. Without PCJ, Hazō is actually at risk of taking a big hit if the dice turn up wrong, especially given that he has only one personal Aspect to call on. He's pretty sure he doesn't need to double PKH, so he'll take a Supplemental to look around to see if there are environment features he can use to make a situational Aspect that could turn the tide against SG1. Nominally, this should be an TN 20 Examination check, but I'll let him make it with Alertness at ½ level because it's a combat situation.
Hazō (Alertness): 18 + 3 = 21
Hm… the lanterns! Hazō creates the Aspect "Flaming Hot Potato"
Hazō will try overpowering SG1 using the lanterns. Supplemental PKH, then attack.
Hazō
Hazō has to retreat at this point. He couldn't inflict a Consequence on SG1, which means he can't realistically win anymore. If he had relevant ranged attacks, he could finish off SG2 at distance, but he doesn't.
He'll spend a round trying to study the shrine guards to see if there's anything else he can figure out about these guys before he runs with his Standard. Again, this should be Examination, but I'll let him roll ½ Alertness just this once.
Hazō (Examination): 18 - 3 = 15
Hazō discovers the Aspect "A Shadow of Their Former Selves", and gets a tag on it. These guardians are much weaker than they used to be – and that's something he can exploit in battle (and maybe not in battle). He'll then Standard Sprint a bajillion Zones away, ending the combat. Hazō crippled one of them, gathered information, didn't take any injuries or spend too much chakra, so I'll cautiously count this a win and award him a FP for achieving his goals.
Hazō spotted one more shimmer along the route. It was a small one, but undefended. Overall, he finishes the update with 265 CP. He gained 2 FP and spent 3 FP, for a net of -1 FP.
Hazō asked Keiji and Miki about the singer that supposedly took the triangle of black metal. Miki claims it was a tall, black-haired, narrow-shouldered man carrying a massively-oversized pack who accompanied his stories with a remarkably-elaborate set of hand-drums. Keiji says she's gotten her memories mixed up, and it was actually a shortish, plain woman with tied-back brown hair who sang beautifully but was still learning how to accompany her songs with a lyre, the most recent lifesinger to pass through town. They talked about it, but couldn't resolve their disagreement. Neither of them know anything about the singer's heading beyond "going out in this direction, maybe because it's on the way, maybe because they want to grab the triangle before moving on".
