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Amidst the wail of rain and lightning, a dead god stares at Kujou Sara.
Orobashi-No-Mikoto watches her from afar. Green moss and crystalized blood covers its still form; a mourning shroud of nature for a bygone fragment of lapsed divinity.
Blood coats her armor and slicks her hair as fog escapes her lips and disappears into the night. A corpse lies below her, corruption leaking through the crevices of his rusting, ancestral armor. Her sword has long found purchase into his bowels past the twisted metal. Black blood spurts from the wound, only to be washed away by rain as it spills into the soil. It was only a few years ago that this man, Washizu, she recalls, had resigned from the Shogun’s army to tend to his estate in Yashiori. He had been a good soldier, a staunch devotee of their almighty Shogun.
And now his legacy will know him as nothing more than both monster and heretic.
Flames gorge themselves on the corpse of Higi Village, lapping up the remains of straw-thatched houses and bamboo baskets stuffed with rotting lavender melons. Around her, her men throw torches and oil bottles into the raging fires, melting the dying flesh of madmen who cried out with rapturous glee even as they threw each other into steel of her men’s swords. It is a merciful end, one overdue for a village that has swallowed by the corruption that spews from the bones of the island’s corpse-god. At the very least, fire was a fitting way to end insanity borne of Sangonomiya’s deity.
When the ashes settle, all that is left is the monumental silence of a history burned away. She steels her voice, ordering what remained of her men to formation before they march back to another one of their temporary encampments. They carry their wounded while the dead remain in muddied soul to be carted off in another day lest they return as vengeful spirits. What few of the villagers who kept their sanity look blankly from a distance as their former lives are kindle to the roaring fire, their dispirited steps follow with trepidation into a new and uncertain life.
‘It will be a harder life for some of them.’ Sara thinks, watching as a boy carrying a basket of Crystal Marrow hangs his head and walks with subdued steps, lost to the shuffling tide of humanity.
When the last of her army withdraws, Sara turns to look at Higi Village’s last breath into the night.
Dendrobium will soon swallow this charnel ruin of ash and madness, unfurling their crimson petals from the mouths of corpses left unburied. Soon, Narukami will boast of victory, purpose, and their place in an promised Eternity. Watatsumi will sing a canticle for the dead stolen away by the Shogunate’s blades, and finally a requiem for their fallen god.
And when Dendrobium flowers bloom in another battlefield, Watatsumi will give praise to the greatness of a god whose madness sickens the land and sings songs of madness even in death. Narukami will cry out for its lost children and its people will wonder if this maelstrom of grief, this cycle of children killing children, was the Eternity that their Shogun sought to give them all this time.
Through it all, Sara will plant those flowers, her sword and bow, the tools she uses to uproot the earth. And someday, she too will be the bed that houses vermillion fields. But until then, Eternity will continue to watch over her. Her role in the great saga of her Shogun’s ambitions is one of a monster: a bird of prey that seeds lycoris over the land. There is no righteousness in the path she walks.
But it is a role, nonetheless.
From the distance, the Statue of the Seven, bows its head in serenity.
When daylight rises along with the morning tides, a letter that smells of warm ocean waters and scented perfumes finds its way into Sara’s camp. Stamped on it, in clear view, is the crest of the Sangonomiya Clan.
The messenger is a scrawny young lad, his face a fallow field unclaimed by stubble or hair. He fidgets under the scrutiny of her men, a red-marked piglet surrounded by predators and hunters who circle him, a murder of purple crows ready to feast. He squirms, writhes, and shies his gaze away from her.
He does not run.
With a nod, her crows disperse without so much as a whisper, returning to talks of the women they will bed when they return as heroes or of the sake they will drink when the sun rises after the next battle.
She calls for the boy and lets him open the folds of the folded parchment. Though the Rebellion’s General speaks of honor in the battlefield, he is, as with most men of honor, blinded by loyalty.
Because more than anything in this blasted war, Kujou Sara has come to understand Sangonomiya Kokomi.
For behind the Divine Priestess’s easy smiles lies the dark depths of the god she serves, endless and all-consuming in its path to power and ambition. It was a smile that spoke of desire, one that greets Sara even when Kamuijima Cannons thunder their baleful blasts of purple death towards Sangonomiya’s men. It is a smile that grows wider when Sara barely escapes daring ambushes and operations that leave her in the care of shrine maidens, clinging between life and death all the while. That smile was one that wouldn’t falter should a Tengu fall from a letter laced in sweet poisons. Because at the end of the day, Sangonomiya Kokomi would love nothing more than to see her broken.
The messenger remained quiet as his eyes traced the contents of the letter, and for a moment Sara waits for him to jerk forward and die in a heap of twitching agony. Instead, he shows her the letter, barren except for the ink that dances in yellow to form Sangonomiya’s message:
“Inside the maw of Watatsumi’s protective deity, let’s have a chase, you and I.”
It was, in all likelihood, a trap, one coiled and played out a hundred times within the mind of the Sea Witch that has, time and again, continued to evade the wrath of a living Goddess. It would be a trap that would lure her in, slowly and steadily until she finds herself drawn too deep to Sangonomiya Kokomi’s tune, drowning before she could realize that the water has already swallowed her, a sailor lost to a siren’s call in the Dark Sea.
But more than anything, it was a challenge. One that asked Sara whether her faith in the Narukami Ogosho would stand strong even inside the darkness that spawned the Tataragami, one where even the roots of the Great Sakura Tree dare not enter. To refuse was to show to Sangonomiya that the Eternity they fought for the Narukami Ogosho was a farce that crumbled in the face of true darkness. A part of her demands her to meet this challenge. To bare the midnight wings of a Tengu against this traitor who has dared to turn her back on Eternity only to worship the will of a Snake fallen from Celestia’s grace.
That is until a scream pierces through the sounds of blacksmiths striking iron and of supplies being hoisted from horse drawn carriages, silencing them all in its cacophonous melody.
The cries of her men do not cease even with the poultices of pharmacists they’ve stolen away from the ruins of Yashiori’s villages. They scream and cry out for their ancestors within medical tents flooded with the scent of powdered onikabuto that mix with boiled incense. It does little to stop the putrid stench of Corruption and blood. The smell wafts past the linen flaps that barely serve to cover their pain from the world.
Around her, refugees shuffle in discomfort within what tents they could have provided, eating from the leftovers of half-heated slop. She spies an Ashigaru break bread with youths who crowd over him as he tells them tales of the Shogun’s mercy, she sees them break into wide grins and already she imagines their dreams of the glory that comes when they too will bring honor in Her name.
All at once, Kujou Sara is so very tired.
The burning of incense would do little for those already being influenced by the Tataragami. They would need the expertise hidden away in the tomes and shelves of the Grand Narukami Shrine. Discipline reasserts itself inside Sara’s head, reminding her of her role as a general first and foremost. To abandon her men and these people was tantamount to abandoning the responsibilities handed to her by her Archon. Sangonomiya Kokomi could wait, these men could not. They would need help and Sara was more than willing to lead them to capable hands.
Even if those hands belonged to that damnably smug fox.
She knew Masahito was more than capable of running the army in her absence. Perhaps cautious to a fault but that would serve everyone here well should Sangonomiya seek retribution.
Decision in mind, the parchment burns up in a puff of lightning and ash.
Inazuma City greets her as neither conqueror nor returning heroine. There are no parades that decorate the streets with the Yashiro Commission’s subdued efficiency nor does the sky fill with the ephemeral lights of the Nagonahara Family’s craft. Instead Hanamizaka is silent when she arrives with the wounded, with only the buzz of the fireflies and electric hum of Onikabutos to greet them. The citizens shy away from them, clutching their children close and rushing back into their homes, through their shōji windows, they turn to darkened silhouettes who peer from translucent frames of paper and cloth.
Sara pays them no mind and instead barks out orders for the wounded to retrieve treatment and to organize the refugees to retrieve aid from the Yashiro Commission. When her men follow her words to their very letter, Kujo Sara takes a moment to lean back against an aged Sakura Tree.
It is almost a surprise that Sara finds herself wishing for Arataki to challenge her to another one of his pointless duels. Perhaps it is selfishness that allows Sara to let the hot-blooded Oni treat her as something akin to a friend, instead of rightfully reminding him that it was she who inlaid his dreams for the sake of another’s. His brazen boisterousness stoked the warrior that lived inside her. A reminder that not all battles needed to end with a cracked blade on the Path to Her Shogun’s Eternity.
That they didn’t need to end with a warrior’s blood spilled on Tenshukaku’s stones.
But there is no Oni with fire in his eyes to challenge her for the sake of rowdy children who crowd over each other to catch a glimpse of their fights. What greets is her is a stone-faced man, the rank of the Hatamoto in his armor, carrying a missive bearing the electro symbol of the Inazuman Bakufu. She accepts the letter, for formality’s sake, and pockets it away. There was only one person in Inazuma who could call for her so brazenly.
The Hatamoto nods, and with a slight gesture from his halberd, beckons her to follow.
Within Tenshukaku, Kujou Sara bends her knee and lowers her head. She feels the eyes of the Okuzumeshuu, upon her. Bodyguards of the Raiden Shogun, each one a veteran worth an army, trained to fight both man and demon. They stood as the pinnacle of what it meant to be a Samurai. Yet every one of them are naught but droplets to the thunderstorm that stands in stillness at the center of the throne room.
“Leave us.”
They depart with practiced muteness, what little footfalls she could hear growing dimmer behind her until the doors to the throne room close in a great whine of metal. And with that, all is silent.
This is not her first time alone with the Raiden Shogun.
Despite that, Sara does not dare raise her head. She can feel her wings straining to keep themselves hidden beneath her skin lest she make a fool of herself within her Goddess’s eyes.
This place is not a battlefield to be won. It is something far more deadly, it is a private audience with the one who holds the diadem of lightning and blade. Memories upon memories of decorum and etiquette fill her mind, drilled time and again by half-remembered tutors who had spared no effort in ensuring that she would recognize how to act when confronted with their Deity. And though she has met with the Shogun many times before, it is as if her very nature has deemed that she still remains unworthy before this Higher Being.
“You may rise, General Kujou.”
It takes her willpower to even tilt her head upwards, to remind herself that though a tool she may be, she is a valued one that has made itself indispensable to the Shogun’s good graces. Sara has no illusions to what she is in the eyes of a deity, for there is nobody in this land of swirling Sakura that the Raiden Shogun will ever consider an equal. Not when the kitsunes of Earth and Sky lie in their eternal sleep within cold stone.
When Sara’s head rises, she is rewarded with the sight of divinity upon mortal flesh. Forever moored to the sands of time; her Shogun was a sliver of infinity forced to don the skin of mortals. There is nothing transient about the beauty that the Raiden Shogun holds. But with divinity comes the apathy she dons on her visage, there is no trace of emotion that Sara can clutch onto and imprint on her mind.
Sara finds that the indifference never gets easier to bear.
Her Goddess looks at her with a raised eyebrow, seconds dissolving into an agonizing minute that leaves Sara almost finds herself fidgeting under the Archon’s look.
“Do you find the tiles of my throne room to be that comfortable, General? Did I not permit you to rise?”
When Sara rises, she does so not with the graceful poise of a Tengu but with the near disgraceful demeanor of a drunkard who has just heard amusement, fleeting as it may be, from their Goddess’s lips.
“Your Excellency. I am but your humble servant, for what purpose have I been called today?” Sara’s throat feels dry, and she does not know if it is the thirst that comes in full force from a journey’s end or at the anticipation of what the Shogun intends to do.
“Your very presence has pleased me all this time, Sara. Many have chosen to face death or pledge allegiance to that ‘priestess’ or plot their rebellion in silence. Yet you choose to stay by my side, knowing that at any moment I can rip you away from your ambition and lay it bare for all to see.” The Shogun pauses, a small lilt of satisfaction bleeds into her tone before her tone grows cold. “I have sundered the flesh of the Serpent that they worship. I allowed them to pay tribute to that rotting corpse in exchange for simple fealty. And now they answer my mercy with this humiliation? It is loyalty like yours, Sara, that deserves to be rewarded. One day, you and I will share in Eternity.”
Eternity – a mere word and yet built upon a foundation that even the Lord of Geo has failed to reach. It is the word that spills from Sara’s lips with every speech and the word that her soldiers live and die on. In the end, Sara knows that the word is reserved for Baal alone. For even though a Tengu’s life is long, history has seen those greater than her fade away into half-remembered legends. Memories were quick to fizzle away in the minds of mortals, one generation to the next.
Eventually, only Eternity will be left to remember it all.
When Baal draws closer, Sara closes her eyes. The Shogun’s hands are satin silk that wrap around the callouses of her palms. And with a simple tug of her hands, soft lips crash against hers. Desire grips Sara, months of repression drawn from sleepless nights in bloodstained battlefields melt away in a singular moment as logic and guilt give way to raw instinct. Adrenaline, a familiar friend, courses through her body with each kiss and soon, Sara finds herself nearly sinking to her knees onto the cold paneled floors, stifling a moan that bubbles up within her chest.
There is a hunger in the way that Baal clutches at her hair, slipping her tongue into Sara’s lips. Her own tongue presses back with shameless need, blood rushes into her ear canals, and the world is now a purple haze that just feels so right. Sara grips at Baal’s kimono before her hands slide around the Shogun’s waist, and she presses up against the other woman, feeling the hum of electro sparking as fireworks across her skin, all while soft kisses pepper her neck.
When Sara’s eyes open, there is no light of love that shimmers in Baal’s eyes, only the depths of a melancholy that Sara cannot kiss away under the cover of Sakura trees or among a sea of lilies below a blanket of starry skies. Despite that, there is desire to be found in Baal’s touch, and though it is not a fire of wanton need that sears her flesh, but it is emotion all the same.
‘They call you a monster, a butcher, an unfeeling tyrant who knows of loss yet chooses to snatch away dreams. But even so, you are the Archon I pledge my very being to.'
This devotion, Sara knows, is an Eternity of its own.