Hakusa's Tale

The war had driven the yamabushi further up the Gifu mountain range. The ascetics of the late shogunate era had largely distanced themselves from both the power-hungry daimyos as well as the Imperial loyalists, although there were some who preferred to cling to the older traditions and fought to resist the rapid change that was sure to come. And it did, with the Restoration, when the Emperor decreed to curtail syncretic worship in an attempt to appease the Eclipse.

This danger wasn't unfounded. Up the yamabushi went, in isolation, and found that the yama-no-kami, the mountain gods, whom they venerated, had corrupted into madness and violence. Things were such that Hakusa had to flee, and already he was the least touched among the half dozen of them. He survived, but at terrible cost to his health. Were things just as bad for the towns and villages below? Or was it imperative that he warn the powers-that-be ? Or did Hakusa need to seek his other brethren elsewhere to consider their fates?

Hakusa Hano was in no rush to leave the mountain he had no direction, and sickness had rendered him so feeble that he also had no hope that he would survive the journey down.

Despondence, melancholy, and the every present agony of his rotting flesh kept him focused on the negative. The Shugenja would not give in though.

He spent his time in contemplation of the inner turmoil he had succumbed to. Knowing he could do nothing for his corrupted flesh instead he focused on what could be done. He cleared his mind by focusing on the text he carried. The secret technique of a legendary sniper that he had carried since he had been raised in his temple. Reflecting on its teaching he sharpened his focus.

From there he fell inward and allowed his resolve to carry him deep into a meditative trance, where he steeled his body for the journey ahead. Hakusa inured himself to the pain setting himself to the journey ahead.After a period of meditation. He had found himself to be stronger, if only in his resolve. Taking in his surroundings, the anger of the mountain god inspiring him to write haiku.

"'Neath baleful Eye's glare
The mountain says "You must leave"
I go to my rest."

After this he began to descend. Looking for servicable timber, or bamboo with which he could craft a bow for himself. He considered the wicked state of the world, wondering how fared the people beneath the vengeful gaze of the Sun Goddess.

Hakusa's thoughts on Amaterasu continued to occupy his mind as he descended the mountain. Having centered himself, his thoughts were no longer on his fellow hermits and their fates, not knowing that that omission would return to plague him in the near future. As part of his ritual, he walked through the singular kata he had mastered, the Owashi-Kyudo, the ability to strike precise and true from a distance, a technique that could only have been mastered in the elevated heights of a mountain range.

The journey now brought him closer to civilisation again; in a few ri he would reach the main Nakasendo mountain trail that connected the former capital Heian with the current seat of the throne, Yedo. Hakusa had to consider exactly what he intended to do next.

"Ordinary is the way. The way is elusive, if you try to turn towards it, you will find yourself against it. The way is not in knowing, or in not knowing. In knowing is delusion. In not knowing, derangement. The true way is beyond all doubt and more free than the whole of outer space." Hakuso muttered to himself by way of mantra, any time the pain became to great he wouldnease it away and continue down the road, talking to no one, not even himself.

Instinct told him Yedo was not the way. And so he took the Heian path without a doubt or slowing to consider. He tread through the dust of a once mossy and grassy road and lamented the absence of green things. He was the only green thing that could be seen. In that, he marveled, and continued.

Down the mountain path he descended, trekking back the same way he had ascended with his brethren when the war started. The utter quietness of the mountain forests, whose green was now coloured grey by the everpresent darkness, made his own skin condition stand out. He felt the unease of the mountain grow even stronger the lower he went, early on a undercurrent of vengefulness, but more and more a certain seething anger in contrast to his contemplative mood. Hakusa could not help but associate that with the beginning signs of human activity further down. Did the mountain think mankind the cause of their current predicament?

While it was a locale that Hakusa had never frequented, he necessarily knew of the various travel stations along the entire Nakasendo trail, and figured he would be close to one of them by now, judging from how far he came down. He could now see a building on a slight cliff, very tiny, still some distance away, very hard to make out in the grey gloom had it not been for his mastery of the eagle eye. The path on which he walked would take him to the foot of that cliff. From the same distance, he thought he could see a few persons heading in the same direction, although their gait appeared to be slower and more irregular than he envisioned how a trekker would move. Even at his slow speed, he was likely to close in on them before the reached the station, should he so choose.

Hakusa needed information so he went where the people were. He continued to walk to the tea house and looked for a place to rest his weary bones.

Hakusa was surprised that despite his slowness of foot, his approach to the station was still faster than the two individuals in front of him. The direction they took seemed to suggest that they had also come from the slopes, from the other side of the mountain range. The most concerning thing Hakusa noted was that he could see they were no ordinary travellers. They appeared to be, as far as he could tell, impaired in their movement in some way. And was that an arrow sticking out of one of their backs?

Hakusa instinctively gripped the necklace of human teeth he wore as prayer beads. Each death mask a mark of his own karmic debt. He may have looked undead, but he had the sense that he was following the walking dead, it did not bode well for the state of Nippon.