The Mountain Witch - Finale
Chapter 5 opens with Omni, waking the next day. The mujina approaches him and tells him he has something to show him. Omni dresses and follows. In an adjacent room there is a mass of hungover tengu. The mujina walked Omni past many chambers, even pointing out the chamber of the giant, O-Yanma's indestructible servant. Further down in the castle, down many corridors, there is a wall of flesh. Where most walls are covered in ornate paper, this one is stitched together from the remnants of people. Agonizing, voiceless screams and eyeless stares. The mujina tells Omni that this is the treasury of O-Yanma, and it is watched over by those that have tried to kill him.
Omni wants to know what treasure could be there, and why the mujina hasn't taken it for himself. The mujina responds that he doesn't care for any of it, and doesn't see as to what value it has. There is a stone bowl, a tree branch, a fine - but cursed - robe, a swallow's nest, nothing that could be of use to him. Omni defies the mujina's warning and opens the flesh door. Beyond it are the Nio, and they were apparently expecting her. A bolt of lightning blasted her, and the Nio called out for the guards to come. She stood ready, and hopelessly outnumbered.
Eisaku woke after a night of completely restful sleep. It was as if something had watched over him, shielding him from the influence of O-Yanma. He and Pen Pen set out for the castle, but he kept losing his way, and the icy winds blinded his vision. Some force was keeping him from the castle, but he found the stone wall that Omni had used to gain entry. Outside of it was a kijo. Eisaku confused it with fast and confident talk and made his way to the door, but Pen Pen had not followed. Eisaku chose to risk the kijo again to get the boy. She asked for the sign of entry, but Eisaku only motioned towards the boy. His actions again dazed the kijo, and she took no action against them.
Pen Pen had not seen what Eisaku had done, and produced the money pouch as he had done when confronted by the yamabushi many days ago. He turned expectantly to Eisaku and asked if it was time to shrink again.
Inside the castle's lower floors, he saw two fu dog statues, facing away from him as if turning a blind eye to his entrance. The hallway stretched into the deep of the place, but his eyes had no trouble adjusting to the candle light; it was dark and stormy outside as well. Eisaku heard a booming sound from deeper in the castle, like the thunder that follows lightning. He moved further in, but towards that sound. He passed a room filled alternately with blood and sleeping tengu, and was choked by the smell of it.
One of them woke and stumbled into the hallway, spotting Eisaku and the boy. Eisaku told them to go back to their lamp-oil. The tengu's eyes grew impossibly wide, and he rushed back into the room to gether the others, shouting "He knows! We're discovered!" The rest of them woke, and there was a great cawing over whether to dispose of the empty jars or to refill them to cover their indiscretion.
Eisaku left them to this. Soon he turned a corner and found an archway of pure obsidian, and it struck him with fear. Inside the archway, images formed, images of a hatamoto betraying his lord, piercing his heart from behind in the heat of battle. Pen Pen looked to Eisaku and saw that his scabbard was dripping blood. Eisaku stood motionless, transfixed by the images in the obsidian.
Before that fateful battle, before the betrayal, a messenger had come to him. The messenger told Eisaku that his wife was captured, and that if Eisaku ever wished to be reunited with her, he must complete two tasks. The first task was given to him verbally. The messenger warned that an assault would come soon, and that Eisaku must slay his lord and then flee the battle.
The second task was given to him in a scroll. Eisaku had made his way to O-Yanma's castle, and although he intended to receive an audience with O-Yanma, he had been instead met by a functionary. He looked much like a man, but he was an oni with a predatory bird's head. Eisaku had read the message and studied the picture, and then tossed the scroll into the fire.
Now the images in the archway faded away, but the functionary remained, real despite the dream. Pen Pen asked if Eisaku intended to kill O-Yanma, hopeful that it wasn't true. Pen Pen pleaded with Eisaku, saying that O-Yanma couldn't be a bad person, because he had given Orami new eyes, and that he had shared his wife with Eisaku.
At that the functionary laughed, telling Eisaku that O-Yanma would receive him, but not alone. All of the ronin would come together in the throne room.
Masahiro and Xi awoke in the comfort of the bathhouse. They took a breath of cold mountain air together, and were saddened by the horrid sky. Masahiro struggled against it, and parted the clouds. Xi glimpsed the moon and saw his love in it, crying tears of sadness. Masahiro watched those "tears" come closer, and saw them for what they truly were.
The two soon dove into an adjacent building, bodies automatically falling into a pattern of trust and aid to close the doors and barricade the windows against the flesh eating bats. They looked around for another way out, but realized they were in the room with the broken spear, the room the goblins had attacked them in. Seeing no other way out, they charged in one motion out from the place and towards the moat they knew.
Luckily there was an entrance to the castle's subterranean layer there, but Xi gasped for air too soon. There was a small gap above the sludge, perhaps three inches of putrid air. The crawl was torturous and long, but the tunnel's ceiling raised suddenly ahead. Above them they saw four holes all in a line, and they heard the rush of voices, perhaps twenty or thirty, coming their way.
Xi was spotted as the tengu began hurtling earthenware and glass into the tunnel. Masahiro avoided detection, but one of the tengu vomited a combination of oil and bile onto his already scarred hand. One of the tengu shouted an idea, and they all began searching for a match to throw down into the tunnel and burn Xi and the evidence. However, none could be found, and so the tengu stormed into the hallway to find the kijo and her magic.
Xi and Masahiro took this opportunity to crawl out from the tunnel. Masahiro stood close behind Xi, so that they looked like one large four armed offal demon. Masahiro created a fog to roll from the room and into the hallway. They lumbered into the hallway with great effect, and the tengu ran in terror. They chased after the tengu, working their way farther into the bowels of the castle.
Taking a corner after a few tengu, they were suddenly in a hallway ten feet wide. In the center of the hallway was a circular swirl of color and fog spanning the width of... the hallway seemed to have disappeared. Many swords, some rusted with age, some fresh with blood, some chipped with combat, some ornately embezzled, pierced the ground. Masahiro saw the ghost of his dead master, bound to the floor by chains that ran from him. The chains were anchored by a familiar sword, his master's own sword. Masahiro's master was being flailed by a great and powerful oni, who was much pleased by his work.
Masahiro was halted by the image, and by his master's pleading. If only Masahiro would pull up the sword, his master would be free.
Xi could see none of this, and instead edged closer to the sword pool. He was attempting to foresee what would happen if he crossed this anomaly. In his ear an impossible small breeze, perhaps the settling of dust, perhaps a leaf falling in the forest below, whispered to him, "I can bring her back."
Xi and Masahiro tried to cross the pool, but only made it to the center, and when they did all other light faded from view. Masahiro could take the pleaded no longer and charged blindly forward, injuring himself, but making it to the hallway beyond. Xi found himself alone for a moment, but was not fearful. The voice came back to him. It was O-Yanma. It told him that Yuki-Ona had killed many women, many of O-Yanma's wives, and that he had become quite adept at bringing them back. The only price would be a favor. Xi refused to give O-Yanma an answer. O-Yanma insisted that he would have his answer soon enough.
Chapter 6
Xi walked peacefully forward and saw Masahiro. Beyond him they both saw a large staircase.
The guards rushed in on Omni's position, but were ordered by the Nio to stop. O-Yanma appeared between the Nio and spoke directly to Omni, addressing him as a child. O-Yanma asked Omni to follow him, if he were ready, and with that, O-Yanma slid the wall to the side and revealed a large staircase.
Eisaku turned away from the functionary and saw that the hallway behind him had become a staircase, and that Omni suddenly appeared on it, charging towards the top. Eisake followed more slowly, with the child at his side.
Xi and Masahiro heard a grinding of stone and a clanking of gears and chains. Something in the castle was moving, waking. They looked back to the staircase and saw Omni appear on it, charging upwards. Soon after, Eisaku and Pen Pen appeared, walking more slowly. Xi and Masahiro ran to the staircase.
Omni had a two story lead on Eisaku, but was struck with the pain of memories. An eternity ago, his family's estate burned through the night. One by one, his parents had dressed the children, given them packs full of clothing and food, and sent them away. Omni had been the last child to be sent on his own that night, and as he walked away, he saw his parents return to the house, never to come out again.
Painful images of the dead in recent days, the bandit they had killed with gray eyes, the bodies of the warriors they had discovered in the shadow of the forest, the man who had been sacrificed to the kijo's ritual, all flooded Omni, as if O-Yanma had centered in on the fear within him. Omni stopped short, sheathing his sword and turning to see his comrades on the stair beneath him. He muttered a curse, but loud enough for O-Yanma to hear. "No, I will not die alone."
Pen Pen turned to see Xi and Masahiro on the stair below, and the odor was too much for the child. He threw up, and then was ashamed of himself. Eisaku comforted him, but at that moment, the grinding metallic sounds became deafening. The entire staircase moved, sliding downward, and the pathway became a whirring of blades.
Xi took command instantly, and the rest of the ronin fell in line to his commands. They made their way past the trap and into the chamber above. It was gargantuan. The ceiling must have been eighty feet up. They had come in from the side, but the room was several hundred feet in each direction. There was a large pathway leading from a grand door all the way to a golden shrine. It was a statue in a seated lotus position, but where one would expect the buddha, instead was O-Yanma's image.
To their side a giant stopped his work of pulling the large chains. The giant looked sad that his trap had not worked, but took no farther action to halt the ronin.
There were many basins, offering bowls. O-Yanma was not discriminatory. Cheap copper coins were beside jeweled statues. Peasant carvings in common wood neighbored with elegant fans or ancestral blades. But Masahiro's eyes centered on two burnt, severed hands.
Long ago, Masahiro's house was attacked. He could see his lord slain, but could not see who had done it. He persued the assassins through the fire they had set, but a great metal casting had fallen upon him. Masahiro strained to lift it off of him, but the heat of the fire withered his hands to charred and useless twigs.
Masahiro had gone to the mountain witch, to O-Yanma, pleaded for help in his quest for vengeance. O-Yanma saw that he had nothing of value to offer, and instead made a bargain with him. O-Yanma listed all the people that Masahiro had met throughout his lifetime and offered Masahiro a chance. A die would be cast, and Masahiro would acquire the hands of someone at random. Masahiro would take those hands for one year, and in that time he would have to exact vengeance, or else face the full wrath of whoever's hands he borrowed.
Masahiro agreed, and the die was cast, but it landed on the highest possible result, the person he had met most recently. The mountain witch himself traded hands with Masahiro, and laughed as he did so.
Now O-Yanma appeared before them, his arms folded behind his back. O-Yanma looked to Xi knowingly, and then motioned to Masahiro. Xi instantly understood and betrayed Masahiro from behind. The two of them undertook a bloody battle, far removed from the honor of a duel. Xi made a deep cut into Masahiro's leg, and as he did so O-Yanma told him it was the hands he wanted. In the end, they were evenly matched, and Xi pressed forward for the kill, dying himself. Xi's final act was to hurl Masahiro's hands at the witch. Perhaps in death he would be reunited with his love, but Masahiro could not know peace.
Omni and Eisaku had stood back, unwilling to aid or to end the fight between Xi and Masahiro. O-Yanma reclaimed his hands and restored them to their former, pristine glory. O-Yanma encouraged them to make their offerings. Eisaku gave Pen Pen a small package and told him to place it on the basin, and when Pen Pen leaned in to do so, Eisaku beheaded the child.
Eisaku had done as he was asked, and now demanded to see his wife. O-Yanma gestured towards one of the large jade pillars in the room, and Eisaku's wife appeared from behind it. As they rushed to embrace one another, O-Yanma ran a finger through the blood. O-Yanma cautioned that she would be barren. Eisaku was enraged, claiming the deal had been broken. O-Yanma countered that she had never bore him a son, and never would. However, if Eisaku could bring him the blood of a strong warrior, O-Yanma could fix her troubled womb.
Eisaku made his choice, and began to leave the chamber with his wife. O-Yanma announced that Eisaku would have to be satisfied that he would have only one heir, a comment which caused him much grief in years to come.
Omni stood alone now, with O-Yanma. O-Yanma could sense that Omni wanted only one thing: death. O-Yanma offered his giant as an opponent, and Omni accepted the fool's errand. Masahiro's spirit could not rest, for he had been cut short so dishonorably by his trusted companion, and so he aided Omni in the struggle. No blade could pierce the giant, and no blow could harm him, but with help Omni leaped as high as he needed to, carrying the giant with him through the roof of the castle and hurling him into the moon, where he can still be seen today.
When Omni came back down to the earth, O-Yanma was much impressed. He told Omni that he could serve the mountain witch, and that he could certainly promise Omni death, as many men frequently came to kill him. Omni refused, and instead leapt at O-Yanma. After a brief exchange, and charged by the vengeful spirit of Masahiro, O-Yanma was slain.
Epilogue
Eisaku's bride was indeed barren, and he was without title or money. They struggled on unhappily, and soon died unhappily. Eisaku's son was raised by his mother, Yukki-Ona, to be part man, part force of nature, and eventually took root in the castle on Mount Fuji.
Omni wandered the lands long after that, searching for the last members of his family, but eventually died, old and alone.
Masahiro's spirit could not leave the castle, so angered and confused by what had transpired. But soon a young boy was born in the frozen forest nearby, and Masahiro was reborn into it. Some would say that Masahiro made a better Mountain Witch than his predecessor, but all who remember this tale are dead.
Wow, full of awesome. Xi was totally brutal at the end, feuled by hatred and confused intentions, but it worked out, I think. I know Masahiro's player felt jipped by the sudden turnaround. I mean, I would too. But I think we built a reasonable end for him as well.