God-Blooded: The Sword of Fate 00-02

Dedication:

This story (whether I finish it or not) is dedicated to IanSaulWhitcomb, DragonCobolt, Tefler, Etaski, RipperFish, Lien_Geller, FinalStand, SZENSEI, Mentalcase, and all the other Literotica authors that have inspired me to try to climb out of the bottle and become one of them.

Author's Notes:

Legend of The Five Rings is a copyrighted Intellectual Property owned by Fantasy Flight Games. This fan fic is not meant as a challenge to that copyright in any way. Am I doing this right? Please don't sue me.

For those looking for an enjoyable alternative to your Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering card games, you might try Legend of The Five Rings. Fantasy Flight is doing amazing things with it. here's the basic link:

For those wondering: "WTF is Legend of The Five Rings?": here's .

Our protagonist in the following story is all about his No-Dachi. For those wondering "WTF is a No-Dachi?" Metatron in his amazing Metatron way did a few videos on it.

A few name pronunciations: Motoki (moe-toe-kee), Nene (nae-nae), Chiumi (chee-ue-mee), Tamiki (taw-mee-kee), Denbe (dane-bae), Shiori (shee-ohe-ree), Arisa (Aw-ree-saw), Oniji (ohe-nee-jee), Yoshiki (yoe-shee-kee), Kadiri (Kaw-dee-ree), Kin (Keen), Gemmei (Ghemm-mae)

L5R Family Names: Bayushi (Baw-yue-shee), Akodo (Aw-koe-doe), Matsu (maw-tsue), Ikoma (ee-koe-maw), Kitsu (Kee-tsue), Shosuro (shoe-sue-roe, that's shoe as in 't.v. show', not something you wear on your foot), Shiba (shee-baw), Kitsune (Keets-nae, yeah this one is wacky too), Hida (hee-daw), Isawa (ee-saw-waw), Togashi (Toe-gaw-shee), Kakita (kaw-kee-taw)

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God-Blooded: The Sword of Fate

Prologue: The Legendary Swordsman

For those of you reading this who aren't legendary swordsmen, I will say: it's not as much fun to be one as you might think. For one thing, everywhere you go everyone knows who you are. Every step you take is weighed down with the expectations of every set of eyes watching you. Those eyes see something more in you than you see in yourself. You walk through every village, taking in every peasant's stare, and silently swear over and over, I will not let you down.

I had heard that the bandit problem in the southern provinces of the Scorpion Clan was so out of control that it had become something of a joke throughout the courts of the empire. Normally such rumors would've had me on the road there immediately. Instead I had dawdled for most of the past year in Ryoko Owari, drinking and dicing the months and the few koku I had away. There had been something building in my mind. A shadow cast over my thoughts that made me hesitate.

I found myself wandering the city streets aimlessly for days. My mind in a tumult of blurring memories and emotions. I had no words to put to this state. There was something missing but I had no idea what it was. Then one day, in the burning midsummer heat, I came upon him on the cobblestone path right outside the Temple of Daikoku, the Fortune of Wealth.

He was a short man in his mid-30s with a strong handsome face dominated by a hawk-like nose and a well-maintained dark brown beard. He wore an orange haori vest over layers of light brown robes. Upon his breast he bore the mon of the Ikoma family, a sacred torii arch wrought with a lion design.

At his side he wore his daisho: his katana, representing his warrior's honor, and his shorter wakizashi, representing his noble soul. Shugenja, courtiers, and other non-samurai of the noble caste usually only carried the wakizashi. Its use in sacred seppuku, the ritual suicide of those who wish to be cleansed of the taint of dishonor, was universal to all the nobility. For samurai it was quite different. To even carry a katana was to proclaim that you knew how to use it. And that you would at a moment's notice if honor called you to do so. Whether by your own determination in the moment or your daimyo's command. I could see in this man's eyes and the way he moved that he had fought and seen death on many occasions. I could sense the strong honor within him.

I immediately turned, trying to get away. But his voice rang out loud and proud, echoing amongst the old stonework of The Temple District.

"Upon the Great Crab Wall,

A young ronin with a Lion's snarl

Stared down in to The Shadowlands Hell

And had a vision of a samurai-ko in Crab armor

He saw the day that she fell...."

Yes, that poem. Written by Ikoma Hana, cousin of the Ikoma Family Daimyo. I had heard it recited often enough. It always gave me overwhelming feelings of dread and embarrassment. To have the contents of one's own existence, especially the darkest moments, made into line after line of flowery poetry was awkward to say the least. I still had no idea how to feel about the fact that the poem was widely known to be The Emperor's favorite.

The Ikoma was 10 feet away from me. A crowd had gathered around us both. I stopped, frozen. My mind in utter chaos. I had missed a few lines but unfortunately not this part.

"...His duty to a Clan not his own

The armies of The Crab broken wide

For five days The Lion Upon The Wall held back the army of Hell alone

As Love slowly died.."

Memories of her took over. My fiancé, Hiruma Misa. Her brown eyes glowing in the radiance of the sunrise. Her hard-muscled body sweaty beneath me in the dim orange glow of the coal light. All the loving whispers between us in the night. The cynical half-joking shared fantasies of a life together. My beloved whom I would've married into the Crab Clan with. The greatest joy in my life had been fighting side-by-side with her upon The Wall. The circles that she drew with the massive axe head of her beloved ono. Her skill with it was very close to equal to my own with my no-dachi.

This was too much. Just too much.

I leaned upon my no-dachi, Meiyo. In its specially designed sheathe I could use it as a massive ornate walking stick (and theoretically a staff. But why I would ever choose to go into battle with a staff when a no-dachi was available was pure madness to me). There was a crowd of perhaps 50 mixed monks and peasants pushing in all around me. Their out-stretched hands reaching to touch the living legend. It had all become a blur. I was panicking, overwhelmed.

Unseen by me in my fugue, the Ikoma had approached me. I felt his hand gently patting my shoulder as he recited the final lines of that damned poem.

"...To this very day he wanders the Empire alone

And beneath Akodo's banner we cry,

Waiting for The Lion Upon The Wall to come home."

That last line. That was the one I had always taken the most effort not to think about. It cut through me like no sword in any of my many many duels ever had. It cut me to the marrow of my being.

I wordlessly screamed, then pushed my way through the crowd and ran until the city was hours behind me.

* * *

It was true. The southern Scorpion provinces had utterly been taken over by bandits. All along the southern border I found village after village under bandit control. The peasant men laughed at and beaten in the streets as the bandits openly raped any girl or woman unlucky enough to draw their attention.

I will not let you down.

Meiyo and I did our duty to the Empire. Day after day, village after village, we culled them all.

110 years ago, the evil immortal sorcerer Iuchiban had returned to Rokugan a second time. He and his Bloodspeaker cult had decimated the Empire before being routed by The Great Clans. In the aftermath, Bloodspeaker cells would still arise periodically to wreak incredible devastation before being destroyed. Indeed, many across the Empire theorized that the vision from their founder that had led The Unicorn Clan to return to Rokugan 45 years ago had been to thwart a third oncoming attack by Iuchiban.

Hida Hokuto, the Crab Clan Champion, had once given me an ornate silver pendant inset with jade in the shape of a lion's head on an etched wall background. I kept a watch on it as I moved south. There was never a single reaction at all from it. There was no evil magic to blame here. I had hunted bloodspeakers across the Empire by this method. I found myself wondering over and over what the descendants of Bayushi were up to. Why had they let this insurrection into their lands occur?

It was on the south eastern edge of Scorpion territory that everything was to change for me forever. Before me I could see the Kitsune Mori, the massive forest that was home to the minor Fox Clan. The Fox Clan consisted of the Kitsune, a small family of earth shugenja with a deep affinity for nature. For weeks I had fought a one-man war against the ludicrously pervasive bandit infestation with nary a red and black clad Scorpion in sight. The Fox were the oldest and most respected of the tiny minor clans. If the Scorpion would not save their own peasants, perhaps I could find help here.

I was on my way up a ridge maybe half a mile from the Fox border when I heard the shouts of many voices. I unsheathed Meiyo and dropped my pack as I ran hard. I checked my other weapons. My daisho, worn more to honor my fallen ronin sensei than for use, were secure at my right side. At my left was Kanshi, a unique sword forged by the best Kaiu weaponsmith to my specifications. It was a sort of emergency back-up to Meiyo. At the top of the ridge I stopped for a moment. Before me were two small armies. First was the bandit army in typical mismatched armor with various cheap peasant weapons. But there was a disciplined coordination between them that one usually only saw in the armies of the various Clans. From my perspective I could actually see orderly formations, including a row of archers moving into shooting position.

The second army standing before the ancient woodland consisted of the scarlet and silver clad Fox. As I watched they chanted their invocations to the earth spirits, raising stone shields and armor from the land as they drew their nagamakis, the equal part sword and polearm, that they were well-known to favor. I also saw at the lead of the Fox three samurai of the Great Clans. A Dragon in green and gold, a Crane in sky blue and white, and a Unicorn in white and purple. But there was no time to focus on the details of these three or much else. The Fox and their allies were outnumbered by at least four to one. I knew what I must do. I will not let you down.

The Ikoma that I had run from in Ryoko Owari three weeks before had touched something in me. For the first time in years I found myself thinking of my childhood home, the tiny mountainous Katei province that my family had ruled since the dawn of the Empire. There on the side of a mountain peak above my family's castle was carved a massive face. It was a depiction of my legendary ancestor Lady Matsu, the fiercest warrior Rokugan has ever known, looking down upon us all. I prayed, imagining myself standing as I had so often as a child gazing up at her. Great Lady, please lend me your strength against these scum. May I honor you and your blood in my veins with every single one that I send to Hell this day.

I shouted my fury to the heavens as I ran into the rear bandit line. There was a very thin group of perhaps a dozen soldiers there guarding the vulnerable line of archers who were beginning to draw their bow strings. I brought Meiyo down hard from a high overhead hold at a curving angle towards my left, cutting head and left arm off the first bandit. My cleave continued horizontally into the fellow beside him severing the upper part of his body from the lower through the middle of his chest. I continued into a wide spin, cutting my way into the archers. This was the beginning of my unique technique, The Steel Wind.

Most samurai preferred the katana for its versatility and reliability. Simply put, a katana was three feet of bladed death in most situations. A no-dachi on the other hand was six feet long and considered by most to be too massive and unwieldy to be of any great use outside very specific battlefield situations. But in my youngest days, like most children in the Lion Clan, I had been inspired by the tales of the first samurai. Among those tales in particular was that of Akodo One-Eye. He was one of the nine children of Mother Sun and her husband Lord Moon. It was Akodo who had established the Lion Clan along with his trusted general Lady Matsu and the wise warrior-bard Ikoma. But it was Akodo who had inspired me especially. For one of the many things he had been renowned for was his ultimate skill with the no-dachi.

I had devoted myself completely to solving the mystery that the no-dachi presented: how to make the most unwieldy of weapons useful at all times on the battlefield? The answer had come in the form of The Steel Wind, a spinning dance of death that required years of practice and experimentation to master. In my 16 years as a ronin I had dueled samurai of every warrior school across the empire. I had fought to a draw four times but I had never lost.

I danced with The Steel Wind, spinning with the momentum of my strikes. The air around me became a shimmering red fog as severed arms, heads, legs, and torsos flew from every bandit that Meiyo and I could reach. It was exhausting mentally to keep this going for any great length of time. I had to track every opponent on every side of me from within the spin. There was a precision required in each minor adjustment to the angle of Meiyo. I was striking and deflecting weapons with each spin. Physically, I relied on the Crab diet I had become accustomed to during my years on The Wall. It was an assortment of high energy foods eaten constantly to maximize sustainable fighting strength for long periods of time.

For how long the battle went on I cannot say. Where I saw my enemies, I killed. There was an ecstasy in losing myself inside that berserker hyper-focus. All that I was outside of battle disappeared. I felt weightless, with no duty nor history nor even a name to shackle me to the earth. I was one with Meiyo. I was death.

It was the commonality of colors that drew me back to conscious reasoning. Specifically, a massive line of silver and scarlet some 15 feet before me. Reluctantly, I slowed down and noticed that I stood upon a long pile of hundreds of bandit corpses.

I felt a deep pang of regret. There was no one left to kill.

In a slight daze I looked down at my own body. I could already feel the blood smears from the spatter on my face. I caught a glimpse of my beard, it was red instead of its usual muddy blond and felt a little extra heavy. I was completely covered in red, dripping blood and gore. My straw cloak, hat, geta, and kimono were most likely ruined.

In my hands was Meiyo, also covered in blood. I flicked it forward, letting the unworthy bandit blood on it fall to the ground. I lowered it and looked to the Fox samurai before me. There was a look of stark terror about the dozens of faces as they stood their ground. Each was staring at me with nagamaki still raised.

My attention was drawn to the soft baritone of a male voice. "Is it an Oni, do you think? It's certainly large enough to be one."

I had heard this said about me before. Where most Rokugani, even those of the noble caste, were five and a half feet tall at most, I was six and a half feet tall. The intense training regimen and Crab diet that I stringently followed were also about building and sustaining maximum muscle mass. I was extremely thick with hard muscle and very little body fat.

The speaker was the single Crane amongst the Fox. He stood at average height, with long loose snow colored hair and striking blue eyes. His ornate sky blue and white armor had painted on it a crane with a wing wrapped around an unsheathed katana. It was the mon of the Kakita, the Crane Clan's family of artist-swordsmen. They were feared for their perfection of Iaijutsu, the art of drawing and striking in a single blindingly fast but precise movement. His hand was at his side, dangerously ready upon the hilt of his katana.

I held Meiyo in my left hand, my right ready to reach for Kanshi. It was a unique katana/no-dachi hybrid. At four and a half feet long, it was the longest sword I could perform an Iaijutsu strike with. Years of dueling on the road had led to its creation. Even a legendary swordsman occasionally got disarmed or encountered an opponent too fast to keep from getting deadly close. It was my best counter to Iaijutsu.

Beside him, I heard a woman laugh. It was the Dragon. She was shorter at maybe five feet tall. She wore no armor, only a hand-painted green kimono with a long sinewy golden dragon resting serenely atop a mountain. The kimono was bordered on all edges with golden thread. Beneath it was a lithe body with a generous bust that I tried to not think too much about. Her cute facial features were framed by a very short mop of black hair. Her olive skin was broken up at her slim neck by tattoos on each side, that continued down into her kimono. One a green serpentine hand with four claws, the other a mammalian orange paw with as many claws. Most striking were her eyes. They were an emerald green that seemed to hold golden flecks when the light of Mother Sun hit them. There was a jitte next to the wakizashi at her side and she held a three-section staff in her hands.

There was an excitement in her voice as she said, "Do none of you realize who that is? That is him! That is The Lion Upon The Wall! The Scourge of The Empire!"

She merrily broke from the assembled mass and ran towards me. I only had enough time to wonder when I had gained the title 'Scourge of The Empire' before the Dragon stood a few feet before me. I opened my mouth, trying to think of what I should say as I stared down at her. She bowed at the waist, showing deep respect and honor. I immediately tried to return the gesture but she waved it off.

"Matsu Motoki, I presume? I am Togashi Kin." She said in her oddly accented voice. A Togashi? They were the mysterious order of tattooed monks who dwelled in the furthest peaks of The Dragon Mountains to the far north. Their founder Togashi was to the Dragon what his brother Akodo was to the Lion.

My eyes took in her face, lingering on those extraordinary eyes, then awkwardly tried to avoid staring at her cleavage as her kimono had opened a little when she bowed. Nestled between the tops of her breasts was a small jade orb worn on a necklace. The orb identified her as an Emerald Magistrate, a member of the Emperor's inter-Clan police force who wandered the empire dispensing his justice. My eyes wandered back up to meet hers. Her warm smile had only grown. There was something here, between this exotic woman and myself. Some deeper connection I could vaguely sense.