The Battle for Togashi Province

Togashi Yodin started from the trance he had been walking in during the past several miles. This area of the mountains was dark. Too dark. Shadows clung like spider webs, were draped like silk from the rocks and the trees. The men murmured in alarm. Suddenly, a figure peeled itself from the shadow, revealing a muscled man covered with tattoos. Even the normally stoic Yodin felt a shock of fear as he saw the featureless face of smooth flesh. And yet, a voice still whispered “Join us…”

Suddenly, men were stepping from the shadows all around the Dragon troops. The sky darkened. Hundreds of peasants with pale, empty faces, and dozens of dark tattooed men. Yodin raged to see his brethren corrupted so, caught that rage, formed it into an arrow, and launched it with clear purpose at his foes. With a roar, his men followed.

Though Yodin could sense the sightless gaze of the Kikage Zume upon him, he could not see through the haze of shadows that infested the battlefield like a thick fog.

With the obscuring shadows came a dimming of sound. Orders became jumbled. Yodin called upon the Tattoo of the Sun not once, but twice, but each time this brilliant burst of light could only push back the shadow a small way.

The men with the dark tattoos fought brutally, but in utter silence. Their mastery of Shinsei’s path was impressive. With a two quick blows they could disarm a bushi, and a third would break his neck. All in silence.

But Yodin’s men were Dragon men, used to the strange and the unknown. They fought back, trying to restore rank and order even in the unnatural twilight that had fallen at midday. Some of the kikage zume could fade into shadows just before the final strike, but the lost Ashigaru could not, and their grayish blood stained the ground.

Yodin called his men to form up in a wedge, looking to fight their way out of the center, but half of the figures in the gloom turned out to be enemies. As he blocked the kick of another monk, Yodin knew that his brother Yama would be laughing at him.

The enemy struck again, disrupting the least trained of the Dragon troops. Yodin glimpsed the faceless monk who had spoken to him weaving threads of night from his fingers that drifted through the air, freezing all they touched.

Though confused, the Dragon still outnumbered their enemy. And they could recover their balance, while the kikage could not generate more numbers. As a tattooed monk faded in front of him, Yodin focused and called upon the Dragon tattoo. A rolling cloud of fire burst from his mouth, burning even the darkness to ash. But the lost Ashigaru seemed remarkably resilient.

The Dragon men faltered, lost in the darkness, fighting an alien enemy. Yodin grabbed the Dragon standard and leaped up to a rocky outcropping. “FOR THE DRAGON” he roared, and his voice cut through the silence that had choked the battlefield as it was magnified by a thousand other throats.

The darkness was fading. The fire of the Dragon was burning it away, and the kikage seemed suddenly unsure.

The faceless monk found himself caught by the steel of the Dragon’s finest samurai. Though he could dance past the blades of a single warrior, a dozen pinned him against a cliff. As his head was taken from his shoulders, his body melted to shadow and the unnatural darkness lifted. Heartened, the men cut through the remaining enemies. Yodin, tired, cold, hoarse, and cut by the spears of the Ashigaru, returned to his meditative trance.