Desnus 28, 4713 (late night, Jikko River)

One way to help unravel the mystery of our missing seer was to involve another seer, so I took Koya aside and asked her if she could do a Harrowing.

I could manage one myself, of course, but as I explained, “I am a little worked up. I’m not sure I can focus.”

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “What is the answer you’re seeking?”

“The best path to finding, and if necessary rescuing, O-Sayumi”

She considered the question, then spread nine cards in front of me for the Choosing. I turned over The Lost.

“Not the best beginning to any journey, to be sure. See the bleak on the card? He’s mad, lost in a world of lunatics, insane asylums, and worse.”

“It signifies a loss of self and identity.”

She nodded. “Whatever is ahead, be mindful not to lose your place in chaos.”

She gathered up the cards and cast nine of them face-down on the table. “Now let’s see the past,” she said as she turned over the left-most column. “The Locksmith. The Foreign trader. The Juggler. Interesting.” She held up the middle one.

“Deals and bargains?” I asked.

“These have certainly been part off your path here, my young, foreign trader. You’re no stranger to a bargain with high stakes. That may yet prove important.” She was suggesting the future was a reflection of the past.

Next she turned over the center column, representing the present: the Unicorn, The Snakebite, and the Cricket.

“The Unicorn offers what you seek, but it’s not in a strong position.”

“So don’t count on it.”

“Correct. The Snakebite, though, is troublesome. I wonder, is it literal…? There are many kinds of venom in the world, in the ambitions and machinations of those who seek power over others for their own gains. Beware of trust betrayed.”

The Cricket sat as an opposite match, and misaligned, but I couldn’t reconcile it. “And the Cricket?”

“Probably nothing, despite its position. It does not match the present.”

Finally, she overturned the last column, representing the future. The Joke. The Wanderer. The Demon’s Lantern. The former and the latter were true matches.

“The Joke, in its true position. A terror will need to be overcome, but it reminds us that not all of them can be beaten with strength of arms alone.”

“I’ve been here before. Some solutions are…unconventional.”

She nodded again, then continued. “The Demon’s Lantern, also in true position. The will-o-wisps represent traps and tricks of a particularly devilish sort.” She closed her eyes for a moment as she reflected on this. “I can’t say exactly what this means, but there are many clever spiders who weave webs of deceit in order to ensnare the unwary.”

I sat quietly for a moment, too, trying to put this all together. Past, present, and future seemed to fold in on one other, the divinations of O-Sayumi mixed in with my own. Had she been forced to come here? Was Shosaito seeking something that only she could provide? It would explain his apparent obsession. At the same time, she left clues for us to follow, and the cards reflected that as well.

“What is the spell telling you?” Koya asked.

“It’s not encouraging any particular course of action,” I said. “More importantly, it’s not discouraging one, either. Though it seems to think we’ll need to be…fluid. Adaptable to a changing situation. More so than usual.”

We had O-Sayumi’s inro and her note, both of which contained clues to…what? Her disappearance? Or how to find her? Or maybe they are one in the same. The answers lay in  Shosaito’s home.

And, now, we also had this odd shogi piece from Numataro-sama, the angle-mover. It jumps out at me because Jiro had jokingly referred to Hatsue this way when we first met them. As she was explaining the game to me. The kappa said, “it can summon the greatest shogi player in all of Minkai when broken”. Shogi keeps coming up. This piece keeps coming up. Is there a connection here?

Is the sky blue?

Desnus 26, 4713 (night, Seinaru Heikiko)

Okay. I just had to know. While Zosi was guiding the wagon, I climbed up front and asked, “Why were you so curious about whether I had…about what had happened to me?”

He turned to stare at the gorgon, or what he’d made out of it. “There is so much to life and the shells we occupy.” He looked out ahead at nothing at all, or something I couldn’t see. “I have enjoyed this cycle as a gnome. They are astounding for their size.”

Wait. What?

He shook his had dismissively, as if he knew what I was thinking. “No, I don’t have any attachment or recollection of my past incarnations. But I do believe that they did exist. Much like the power of Alchemy, we transform the physical and migrate the anima into the next shell. But this time? I plan to gather that information.”

He was talking about reincarnation.

It is widely believed among followers of Irori that those who achieve perfection in life go to his side to serve him in death. Those who fall short are reincarnated to begin the journey anew. That would make him the only deity that embraces it as part of his tenets. Most others frown upon it, though they don’t necessarily object to it, either (that includes Pharasma).

Otherwise, the practice is the domain of the druidic faiths and witchcraft.

Zosi turned to look at me. “Should something extinguish this shell, I don’t want to be anchored to it. My chosen method of restoration will be reincarnation so that I may experience the transformation of matter but retain this stream of consciousness. My plan is to purchase a scroll and keep it handy.”

I nodded. “I understand; I’ll honor your wishes.”

“The only problem I see is…the one who is all fixed on endings.” Qatana. He shook his head, “Groetus. I don’t know much about the divine; I appreciate all they did to create this world. But this Groetus, if the crazy one speaks truth about it, will be the undoing of it all. It’s a dark god with a dark path and I don’t want her involved in my return.

“I don’t trust that her very own transformation is not happening right now, moving her anima toward a destructive darkness. Her delight in the death of others is unsettling. It is one thing when it is a monster from another realm… but fellow humanoid races.” He shook his head sadly, “I know my words hold little weight. You’ve traveled for so long that you are mostly blind to the madness that dictates her conduct, but someday, I think this veil of trust will be lifted. I just hope it is before she turns on Ameiko.”

Why does Qatana always have to make things so complicated? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times, and it’s one with no answer.

I know why he was worried. And I get it. I really do. But, it was a skewed perception, one that didn’t accurately reflect who she was.

“I grew up with Qatana. I probably know her better than anyone, though admittedly that is not difficult and sometimes I feel I don’t know her at all. I understand why you’re worried. Perhaps this will help put you at ease.

“When she was nine years old, her parents were killed in front of her and she was sold into slavery. I thought I’d never see her again, but she was rescued by Shelalu, and she returned home nearly a year later.

“A year is a long time. For most of it she was forced to do…terrible things. I’ve heard the stories. They are horrible enough that I don’t feel I have the right…they are her stories, and not mine to tell. But believe me when I say they were worse than I could imagine, even many years later when she started opening up to me.

“She doesn’t delight in killing people. Not exactly. But she has developed a strong, if not extreme, animosity towards those who would abuse and exploit others. Her attachment to Groetus is…a coping mechanism, I think. She is only one person. She knows she can’t save a world that is filled with misery. She welcomes the end times not because she relishes in destruction, but because it will do what she cannot: end all suffering, everywhere.”

I don’t know if this helped her case or hurt it.

We ended the day on a much lighter note: I listened to stories about his cat.

Desnus 27, 4713 (night, Sakakabe)

Someone continues to spy on us. My spell alerted me earlier this evening as we were looking for an inn. With a bit of experimentation I was able to determine that the target was Ameiko, which is just fucking great. It means whoever is watching us probably knows who she is.

I tried to get an image of the spell caster but it didn’t work. Which is also just great. Magic can be so unreliable. One wonders how casters rise to such positions of power when our spells don’t work correctly half the time.

Desnus 28, 4713 (late morning, Sakakabe)

Another day, another attempt to spy on us. Once again, I tried to reverse the conduit to get a look at the voyeur, and once again it failed. This time we didn’t terminate the offending spell, but let it run its course as a rough gauge of the other caster’s power and it lasted a quarter of an hour. Which is quite a bit longer than I can manage, and that has me nervous. Very, very nervous.

Should it? Maybe. Maybe not. I know what my capabilities would be if I were that skilled, and suffice it to say that I expected more. A lot more. Either they are content with just watching us, or they have help. Help that is powerful, but limited in its scope.

We found a decorative samisen to present to O-Kohaku as a gift. I used a spell to etch the tea house’s logo—a cherry blossom—on it to give it that added personal touch. Hopefully this will be enough of a gesture to secure an audience with her.

(night, Jikko River)

Gods, what a day. We are now searching for a missing geisha by the name of O-Sayumi. As I feared, establishing Ameiko’s legitimacy is requiring us to prove our honor through an endless string of favors.

That being said, O-Sayumi’s story is rather disturbing, so we are pretty motivated to get to the bottom of it. She worked as a geisha in the Kiniro Kyomai tea house and was apparently very popular with a long list of regular clients who ask specifically for her. One of these clients was a rather well-known pearl merchant named Yugureda Shosaito, only he was more or less obsessed with her and kept inviting her to his home for a “private performance”. For the longest time she refused, but then one day, without warning or explanation, she accepted…and she hasn’t been seen since.

Strangely enough, she seems to have predicted her own disappearance. I would have found this unusual many months ago but now? I just accept as fact that she may be a talented seer. She left clues behind in the form of notes, verbal messages, and curiosities: a strange puzzle box or inro, and a vase.

The inro is filled with three items that are obviously important but in a bafflingly obtuse way. In other words: we don’t know what any of it means. Either she was too clever, we’re too dim, or we haven’t come across whatever it is that will make sense of it all. I am hoping for the latter, but worried it’s the former. What if it never makes sense to us?

We traced the inro back to its sculptor, who then brought out the vase. It depicted an image of a kappa, and when we turned over we found cucumber-scented bath salts stuck inside the unusually deep recess in the bottom. The sculptor explained that he made these items at her request and to her exact specifications, and that she told him to give this vase to the honorable people who were seeking her. Which implies she foresaw her future weeks in advance, to a level of detail and precision that I had not thought possible.

The vase led us to where we are now: the home of The Wise Kappa, Numataro-sama, whom O-Sayumi had referred to as her uncle.

Obviously, they are not related by blood. From Numataro-sama, we learned that O-Sayumi’s mother had been killed by a monstrous tiger when O-Sayumi was just an infant. Her mother knew she was being hunted, and she hid O-Sayumi’s basket under a bush before the tiger caught up to her. The kappa found the infant, and raised her as his own until she was old enough to need the company of other humans.

The kappa believes it was Shosaito that had O-Sayumi’s mother killed. He also believes the merchant is a powerful wizard and an all around shitty person. Which would, of course, follow from the whole “killed her mother” thing. And by the way? I have to agree with the “wizard” assessment. We can see the island where Shosaito lives; it’s surrounded by dark shadows and the landscape there seems drained of color. Whatever he is up to I am betting it is to no good, because come on. Can you be any more obvious?

Why did O-Sayumi agree to visit this person? That is the big mystery, the question that everyone who knew her has asked and that no one can answer. There is more or less universal agreement that Shosaito was creepy and made everyone, especially O-Sayumi, uncomfortable in his presence. There is also universal agreement that she would never willingly agree to go to his home. Which suggests that she wasn’t willing, which in turn implies that she was coerced or blackmailed.

Obviously, that’s just a theory, but it’s the only one we have and it’s one that fits the facts.

We now have a dilemma on our hands. We must go see this pearl merchant-turned wizard-turned kidnapper, but we also have Ameiko with us because we’re currently being hunted, and she’s arguably safer with us than sitting in an immobile fortress that is far from being a secret. And because we have Ameiko with us, we also have Shalelu and Koya with us, and there is absolutely no way we are bringing Koya into something this dangerous, and I have strong reservations about Ameiko as well. But, we can’t leave them alone, either, because see above.

Desnus 25, 4713 (late afternoon, Seinaru Heikiko)

Sandru is leaving. This is not really a surprise: he was hired to get us all here, and now that job is done. He and Ameiko are very close friends, but he still has a business to run and taking up arms in a revolution was never part of the plan. Bevelek and Vankor certainly didn’t sign up for it, either, and they are eager to get back to their family.

Their return trip should be a lot easier. There are no crazed disciples of Sitthud commanding winter storms, no armies of the dead, and no enraged white dragons standing between here and Avistan. On top of that, he’ll be crossing the Crown at the proper time of year. To accomplish the latter, though, he has to leave now. It will take over a month just to reach the Pass, and he needs to be on the ice by the middle of Erastus. That doesn’t leave him much time to prepare, provision, and hire any help he’ll need to get safely across.

The finality of the caravan departing is sinking in. For nearly a year it’s been about the journey, but now we are here and there is no more going back. I mean, we could, but we’d either have to leave the Seal behind us or run away with what we can carry. Neither option is particularly attractive much less realistic, so here we are.

It took only an instant for Qatana and I to return to Jiro’s camp. Heading back here took a little longer because we needed to bring the Seal, and that meant relying on Qatana’s spells. And then we had to explain to Olmas why Ameiko wasn’t with us (which didn’t take very long, but sure felt a whole hell of a lot longer).

What can I say? She’s not going to just sit quietly in her room while everyone else goes outside to play. She’s an adult and capable of making her own decisions. If she’s going to build support among the people here, then she’s going to have to demonstrate that she’s worthy of it. The Seal can only prove her claim—it can’t rally people to the cause, or instill them with morale. And establishing trust with Jiro before he knows who she is does make a certain kind of sense. The impact of the Big Reveal, assuming this all works, will be that much greater when it happens.

That being said, we need to rein this in. Ambushing second-rate bandits on horseback is one thing, but some of the filth we get mired in goes way beyond that. Ameiko can’t claim the throne if she’s dead, and there are some forms of “dead” that can’t easily be undone. If she’s going to take risks, then we need to make sure they are measured ones.

Fortunately for us, and for Olmas, wiping out the raiding parties seemed to go off without a hitch. We had this elaborate plan in case any of those bandit teams made it back to the fortress, but ultimately we could have skipped all that work and just slept in, instead. Literally one horse returned. One. It was scratched up a bit but it had obviously fared better than its missing rider, whose blood was all over the saddle. Radella used a spell to talk to it (the horse, not the saddle) and we learned the raiding party had fallen afoul of ether Jiro or Hatsue. Just to be certain, Dasi used one of those creepy spells of his on the rider’s blood and got much the same information, only with a lot more attitude.

It’s been several hours and this whole place still smells like bacon. This is what happens when you put Ivan in the kitchen. Not that I am complaining about the food, but gods, that smell lingers.

(evening, Seinaru Heikiko)

We needed to use the Seal. Obviously this was not a surprise but we weren’t really eager to pull it out and start waving it around. I mean, sure, it’s not a beacon or anything. It doesn’t actively alert people that it’s out of the box, but if anyone associated with the Five Storms happened to be looking for it at the exact same time then we’d be standing in the center of a giant bullseye.

How likely is that? We don’t know. A few months ago I’d be skeptical that anyone would spend the resources to search for it day and night, every day for months on end, but now that we’re sitting in their back yard? If it was me, I’d try my damnedest to make it happen. I can only assume they’d do the same. So, it was a huge risk and literally no one was comfortable with the idea. We spent quite a bit of time, in fact, grasping at straws for ways to avoid it, but we were just delaying the inevitable. The vault would not open no matter what Ameiko tried. It wanted a scion in possession of the Seal, and nothing short of that combination would do.

We had a long talk about the right way to do this. The worst thing that could happen would be that we’d find ourselves in the middle of small army of oni, so the idea was to prevent that from happening. With the right spells, they could see the room we were in and teleport straight to it, so we had to make that as difficult and unlikely as possible. Fortunately, I have already fallen into the daily routine of preparing a spell to detect this sort of scrying , and I prepared a spell that suppresses all magic (including my own!). These two together were about as effective a defense as I could prepare. Just to be safe, though, everyone readied themselves for a fight. Olmas even set Suishen ablaze. I am sure this did not make Jiro or Hatsue nervous at all.

That advanced planning may even have saved us. When Ameiko touched the statue with the Seal, the floor in the center of the room slowly sank down into a hidden vault. And within seconds, my spell alerted me to magical sight, focused somewhere in the room. I immediately cast my next spell, and all the magic around us when dark. Save for Suishen, whose flames continued to burn inside the field. I remember thinking, That’s interesting.

When my spell expired, the scrying was gone.

Jiro has pledged his service to Amatatsu Ameiko. Seeing that vault open, and finding his family’s ancestral weapon inside, were proof that he was in the presence of an heir to the throne (in fact he was in the presence of six of them, but we decided not to muddy the issue). I got the sense he had been waiting for a moment like this for a good part of his adult life, and it had finally arrived.

Building a rebellion, however, is going to be a lot harder than knocking two statues together. The good news is, the Jade Regent is as terrible a ruler as he is a person and that gives us a significant opening. He’s relying on brute strength to take and hold the throne since he knows he does not have a legitimate claim. A significant piece of his military is a private army that he calls the Typhoon guard, and of course armies, private or otherwise, must be paid. This has resulted in a plague of surplus taxes, and the internal strife in general has strained Minkai’s relationship with other nations in Tian Xia.

As Jiro sees it, Ameiko needs the support of the nobility, the military, and to some extent, the criminal underground to take advantage of this situation. Testing that theory through concrete action is, of course, the rub.

First, the nobility. Merchants are the key to Minkai’s economy, and Minkai’s souring diplomatic relations are putting a damper on trade. That, in turn, is driving Minkai into a recession which is clearly not endearing the government to anyone. The ruling class, in the mean time, is dealing with the additional tax burden, which they are either soaking up or passing on to their subjects.

The geisha of Minkai have some influence with the merchant clans (or guilds, or whatever they are called here), and political influence inside the nobility in general. Jiro suggests that this is the best way to start. There’s a renowned tea house in Sakakabe owned by a particularly notable geisha named O-Kohaku. It turns out, her uncle was the governor of Kasai…before the Jade Regent had him killed. We’d have to be outright incompetent to not get her as an ally.

As for the military, they see the Jade Regent’s private army as direct rivals if not an outright threat. This also means more political rivals for the military, all vying for leverage inside the government. Officers who once found themselves in positions of power may be seeing their influence wane as the Typhoon Guard takes their place.

Convincing the military to turn against the government in an honor-bound society, however, is tricky business. Before they will take any such step there needs to be a crack in the dam, and that crack takes the shape of the local daimyo in the north, Sikutsu Sennaka. Already locally famous for allowing these bandits to prosper, Sennaka has other wonderful qualities, such as using blackmail, intimidation, violence, and outright cruelty to maintain his authority, and using his power to bully the neighboring provinces. Cutting that thread may be the catalyst we need to bring at least part of the military on board.

The underground is the one that worries me most because I am not convinced they would be reliable support. One would, in fact, think that a corrupt government works to their advantage. Jiro, however, has suggested that the ninja clans may be sympathetic to a regime change; they have their own sense of honor and, morality aside, the Jade Regent’s government may be something of an affront to their principles. The theory is, even if we can’t get them to side with us, we might be able to convince them to not get involved at all. To do that, we need to travel to Enganoka where representatives of three of the more powerful clans gather every month during the new moon. It is one of the few times you can meet with them to discuss matters more complicated than hiring them for their “services” (and I am sure I don’t want to know what those include).

Of course, we’ve had some experience with ninjas that makes me skeptical of all of this, and I said as much to Jiro. We explained about Kimandatsu, the Frozen Shadows, and of course our good times in Ordu-Aganhei. Hatsue turned to Jiro and said, “Oni Mask?”

As you might guess, anything with the word “oni” in it gets our attention.

There are many ninja clans within in Minkai, but over the years four of them have risen to a level of prominence: the Black Lotus, the Dragonshadow, the Ruby Crypt, and the Emerald Branch (which is more of a vigilante group). About 80 years ago, however, a new clan emerged and quickly rose to the same heights through a string of ruthless assassinations and a penchant for targeting government officials. They call themselves the Oni’s Mask. The more he talked, the more it sounded like an extension of the Five Storms and of course the timing was right, both for the oni’s campaign against the royal families of Minkai and the appearance of the Frozen Shadows in Kalsgard shortly thereafter.

And let’s not forget the telltale sign of the Five Storms: the painfully obvious name, “Oni’s Mask”. Only the Five Storms could come up with something so dumb.

Where does all of this leave us? The new moon is two weeks away, and we’re obviously not ready to launch an assault on the daimyo, so that means starting with door number one.

(night, Seinaru Heikiko)

Hatsue is a sohei of Irori. That took me by surprise. I tried to talk to her about it since we had some common ground, but she was a bit more focused on the sales pitch for coming back to his church than just talking. Honestly, I think this was my fault. I inadvertently made the conversation about me which is pretty disingenuous.

That little faux pas aside, this explains her rather intense (some might say “fanatical”) devotion to her deity. It probably also explains why Ivan’s infatuation with her soured quickly. He wanted to learn a little bit about Irori, but Hatsue doesn’t do “a little bit”. It’s like asking Qatana about Groetus, only less disturbing.

Desnus 26, 4713 (mid-day, Osogen Grasslands)

Zosimus and I are heading back to Seinaru Heikiko again. Yes, I said “again”. Zosi needs his wagon, and with Sandru leaving we had to bring it back ourselves. Technically, Zosi doesn’t need me for that, of course, but teleporting there shaved a day off of the round trip time which was in everyone’s best interest.

I could have just teleported back, but making him travel alone didn’t seem wise, or polite. And, in all honesty, I was interested in spending the day in his alchemy lab. It’s a little cramped, but there is no shortage of stuff to look at, and it’s another opportunity to let him rifle through my spellbook for whatever he can adapt to alchemical formulas. We just need to take turns up top to make sure the wagon is still headed in the correct direction.

We’re being pulled by an animated gorgon. The gorgon we killed back in the House of Withered Blossoms. It’s more than a little unsettling, and for all appearances we have blurred the line between hero and villain, but in a way this works to our advantage. Who is going to walk up to an armored wagon being pulled by the animated corpse of a gorgon? You’d have to be out of your damned mind.

We were both up top for a while, just talking about random things when he asked me out of the blue, “Have you ever died?”

It’s not the kind of question you’d typically ask in polite conversation, but we’ve been together long enough now that this is the sort of thing that passes for normal.

“Never, but there were times I thought I might.” I sensed he was looking for more, so I said, “I was knocked unconscious once. When I was younger. I was told I had a concussion.”

“What was that like?”

“I…I don’t remember a lot of it. When I came to, I had no sense of time and couldn’t put names with faces. I was hit very, very hard.” The way he had asked was all very clinical which made me uncomfortable. And I really didn’t like talking about it, anyway. “I…don’t really like talking about it.”

I was better conversation than this one moment, honest. But it’s what stands out.