Prelude - Ikari, Kayo, Satoshi

We should press on to Itsuno, we're nearly there and it's the only lead we have

From the shadows surrounding the ojizo, Satoshi watches the others as they look down at the base of the shrine.

As they pause, he looks carefully around the area and listens for any sounds that might give away dangerous men or creatures lurking in the trees or brush.

"I'm not certain that was Nira's arm," Kayo corrected, her gaze steady. "It bore the crest of the Ashikara clan." The bloodied statue was a disturbing sight, an affront to the gods that felt like a dark omen. Though repulsed by the impurity of the blood, she felt a prickle of unease at leaving the desecrated statue. Nevertheless, she did. Her smile, unnervingly bright against the grim backdrop, widened as she pointed ahead. "Yes, let's press on to the town of Itsuno now."

Sawada appeared momentarily confused by Kayo's correction. "Was what we found not Nira's symbol of authority? Or would an Ashikara clansman possess such a jitte?" These were questions they could not yet answer as they stood at the statue that marked the waypoint. Ikari and Kayo found nothing that needed them to tarry, and urged Sawada onward with them towards the village. Leaving the statue and forging ahead, both of them felt the uneasy sense that the spirit of the Jizo-san had been tainted by the bloodshed. Did they imagine it, or did it seem as if a red mist began to emanate from the base of the totem, adding to the night fog?

Further back, in the dark, Satoshi looked around the nearby forest of stunted pine and yellowed birch which surrounded the path, but saw no evidence of a broken trail where some creature or person could've ambushed this particular spot to maim their unfortunate victim. Looking ahead as they prepared to continue their trek, he saw that the leaves of the trees ahead of them were darker, with a deeper reddish tint to them.

The path curved ahead, uphill, then gently sloped downwards to a gap in the valley, drawing them finally closer to Itsuno, which sat near the Kisu river, framed by the mountains. Even in the eternal twilight they could count the number of houses with two hands, from their vantage point, and only three of them appeared lit. The fog had now turned into a fine misty drizzle.

Behind them though, and now even Sawada could feel it, there seemed to be a faint presence, ever since they passed the shrine waypoint. Satoshi had seen nothing either even though he was some distance back. The presence simply felt like it was at their backs, rather than in front of them.

Kayo considered the alternative. "Yes," she concluded, a thoughtful frown briefly replacing her smile. "It's possible Nira was once a clan member who somehow found himself exiled here. Let's find him, if he still lives, and uncover his story."

A shiver traced down Sayo's spine, an instinctive warning. Unease prickled her skin as she scanned the shadows behind them, restless and alert.

Continuing down the path, looking back occasionally.

Satoshi wipes the lower edge of his zukin, quietly cursing the drizzle as it slowly soaked him. As the others reached the top of the slope and then began the descent into the valley toward Itsuno, he spots a large cypress tree and decides to hide. He presses against the wet wood of the trunk and peers around toward the presence, hoping to catch a glimpse of it as it passes. If it was a danger to the others or to the village, he needed to know what it was.

Satoshi, being still an approximate distance behind, found that the red mist was more substantial now, not merely as an atmospheric tint of the night fog. Undoubtedly triggered by their passing of the ojizo shrine when they took the sole path to Itsuno, it seemed to coalesce and ring the outskirts of the village, as if it were beginning to form a palpable barrier.

Satoshi now noticed the fringes of of zukin, not merely damp with the wetness from the drizzle. The hems were beginning to be soaked with something thicker, and he was familiar with what substance it was - blood. Looking ahead at where the other three had advanced, there was some doubt as to what would happen if he tried to push through the swirling mist to reach them. Would he be prevented from pushing onward, or would he be the only survivor outside of this potentially deadly blanket of fog?

Ikari and Kayo, with their focus set ahead of them, was less aware of the stifling atmosphere now enveloping the village they entered. Kayo could feel something wrong in her bones, and Ikari, was he cast his glance back, could not help but see how the fog around the village appeared to have thickened, and how it now had an unmistakeable red tinge, lightly obscured by the drizzle that descended on them. This was no natural phenomenon, the sense that they were now enclosed. Kayo in particular felt an even stronger flash of the same unease she felt when she stood in front of the shrine earlier, unease that came with a hint of sadness.

"I have not had the occasion to come to Itsuno myself." Sawada looked to the other two for direction as to what to do next, for there was a total lack of activity before them. Granted it was at night, but there were no people, nor sounds of livestock, just the muted murmur of the river bank and the light touch of the drizzle. Only those few houses, lit from within, indicated that there were still residents. "Koji Yatabe is the otona here." A shoya was reference to a village elder.

"Hell is consuming this world, we already lost a companion. Quick lets get to the Elder's house, and pray they are in a hospitable mood"

As his fingers come back slicked with blood rather than rain, Satoshi hesitates a moment but then decides that getting help from outside the village would be too late in coming. Being inside the fog was the best chance to help the others and his intuition told him that he should check the dead drop in the village as well. So, he takes off at a sprint, hoping to pass through the swirling mist before it thickened too much more.

"Perhaps we should walk around," Sayo suggested, her gaze darting nervously left, right, and behind, a sweet smile plastered on her face. "Let's get a feel for the town. Something is deeply wrong here, a palpable darkness. I can sense it, I always have a sixth sense for this kind of thing." Her smile remained fixed, an unsettling counterpoint to her restless eyes. As a lady of the court, her life had been shielded, her soft gaze unaccustomed to such brutal bloodshed. This was a horror she had never witnessed, but her intuition were uncommon, she can feels the danger all around them.

Ikari nods to the suggestion to look before we knock, and will approach the nearest house with stealth to peep in a window or door crack.

Ikari, Kayo
Sawada was unfamiliar with the village, so it was Ikari who noted which house was likely to belong to the elder, it was the only one with a low bamboo wall that fenced off a small compound, compared to the others which were simpler structures of wood without a compound. One house sat nearer to the river bank, next to which was a rack on which hung a fishing net. Another had a number of metal and wood implements stacked up neatly against an exterior wall, some sort of toolsmith no doubt.

Kayo stepped forward to enter one of the pitch-dark houses. She didn't need any intuition for her to surmise that something must be wrong, given that the front door was ajar, but needed Ikari's lantern to see if anyone was inside. The interior revealed the humble decor of a simple village home: low table, matted flooring, small row of shelves to one side. The familiar layout meant they knew where the bedroom would, off to the left, and the kitchen would be further at the back of the house.

There was no one home. The condition of the house showed that the place was abandoned as it stood. Home items were still left where they were, dishes on the table, the bedroll still left on the floor and not put away, a knocked over nightstand suggested the occupants might have left hurriedly.

Yet there was still a few residents living here? Judging by the three houses which were still lit, one of which was the largest one. That was the one Ikari sought to peek into.Satoshi
It would have been pointless to be caught out here with this strange phenomenon. Satoshi skipped ahead as quickly as he could, trusting in his trained lightfootedness, shunshin no jutsu, to get himself propelled forward. He would end up out of cover, reaching the village in the open, but at least he would bypass the seeming danger.

Nothing impeded his movement, insofar as the barrier was an insubstantial one, and he sped through to reach nearly the same spot Ikari, Kayo and Sawada stood when they entered the village. Then he noticed again the wetness on his clothing. The threads of the camouflaging attire he wore seemed to begin to disintegrate, and that would leave him without a disguise. More troublingly, he found that the red blood-like tincture of mist seemed to stain his skin permanently. Rub as he might, it didn't seem to come off.

Tired from the hike, and the bad leg cramping. Ikari is unaware how exhausted he really is.

It was the kind of thing that would catch Kayo's attention, a pair of hyoshigi, or wooden clappers, used in taiko performances or even sumo wrestling, struck together to create a cracking sound to signal action or punctuate rhythm. Perhaps the previous resident here was a musician of some sort.

Ikari picked a corner of a window to peek into, figuring that where there was light, there was bound to be someone within, unlike the abandoned house. The elder? From his angle he could see a man and a woman, dressed in homespun wear, sitting at a low table in the centre of their main room. They looked like they had just had their dinner, judging by their bowls. The scene was oddly disquieting, given the contrast between how ordinary they appeared to be, contrasted with the dark domestic emptiness of the other house they had checked out.

Satoshi wipes futilely at the red stains eating at his disguise and blotching his skin. "Maybe a good pumice scrub at a bathhouse will help," he mutters to himself without much hope. Beside the discoloration, he could feel the unclean taint clinging to his skin as well.

He looks back over his shoulder at the fog barrier before heading into the village. He plans to stop and check the dead drop and then try to rejoin the others.

(sneaks back to Kayo to describe what he saw)

Lost in the unsettling atmosphere, Kayo, with her unconscious inclination towards taking things, found the hyoshigi inexplicably dangling around her neck. Startled by Ikari-san's sudden reappearance, she jumped. "Psssss... don't creep up on me like that!" she hissed, a flash of irritation in her voice before she focused with a smile. "What did you see?"

He explains and the lady listen patiently. "Best not to alarm the locals and draw unnecessary attention. Let's quietly check the other houses first, see if anything seems amiss."

That the exterior of the village was deserted meant that their creeping around went entirely unnoticed. It was late into the night and the remaining residents were indoors. They counted seven homes, plus a shack by the river to which a small raft was tethered. Apart from what must be the elder's house, they managed to spy a younger man as the sole occupant of a smallish house, possibly a trapper or woodcutter of some sort again judging by the equipment that sat near the wall of his hut.

"We should introduce ourselves," Sawada frowned deeply as Ikari and Kayo looked like they were about to step into another house. What was natural instinct for bakuto, being aware of their surroundings and reverting to subterfuge, was obviously very wrong for the more honourable and dutiful watchman who risked his life to make the journey here. "It is inappropriate to search the houses."

The fact that there were only four of them wandering about outside meant that it was inevitable that the trio would notice Satoshi, even if the shinobi were totally stealthy, not if Satoshi needed to traverse the village path to get to his secret drop: the nook of an old cypress along the north side of the village that was buttressed by a row of stones as an embankment to prevent the soil from running down towards the river. The underside of one of the stones bore a Koga clan mark pointing to the nook. Inside was only one slip of folded paper, which meant it had been checked recently, and this slip would have been the reply to whomever was supposed to pick this up.