Chapter 1
Fur-tail
The Takenuma swamp was not a safe place to live. Everyone knew that. The ground never quite attained the degree of solidity found elsewhere on Kamigawa. The same held true for relationships: they could shift without warning. Was it any wonder the marsh drew so many criminals? Still, even these mercurial traits paled before the disasters which had been visited upon the boggy region in the last few centuries.
First, had been the loss of the entire Umezawa clan. One of the few things Takenuma inhabitants had been able to count on, or take pride in, had been the ever-present family of one of its famous human sons. Though Toshiro Umezawa had almost singlehandedly ended the Kami War, he had disappeared shortly afterwards. His legacy lived on however, through a son, Takeshi, born to the assassin Kiku. The Umezawas had not always ruled the swamp in the intervening years, but they were always there, like the bamboo that gave the land its name. All that had changed one day, when a golden kami of terrible power had loudly and brutally torn through the swamp; slaughtering every single solitary person with a drop of Umezawa blood. Some called it a dragon, though from the accounts, the beast was shaped more like a lizard than a snake, as was the norm with dragons.
People expected reprisals. After all, the Umezawas were often said to have made a pact with the Myojin of Night's Reach. But Night too, had fallen before the wrathful kami. It had taken years to make certain, but according to other kami, the patron spirit of darkness and silence had been greatly diminished by the golden one's assault. No longer could the great spirit be called on in times of need. Wise ones speculated that the Myojin had retreated to someplace far away, a place the Umezawa-hating kami would not think to look for her.
More recently, had been the slaughter of a nezumi village by fire only a few years ago. Rumor had it that the culprit, a human with a metal arm, had been captured and nearly beaten to death, but had escaped through some trick of kami magic.
This last incident had hit home the most for Fur-tail, the nezumi mercenary. She had lost friends in the conflagration. That the human responsible had escaped never sat well with her. Vengeance had ever been on her mind, and never more so than in the last month; though for even more personal reasons.
Fur-tail was so named for the unusual amount of hair that adorned what should have been a bare appendage. In her youth, she had been self-conscious and often bitten chunks out of it to better blend in with her peers.
Her father, Yellow-tooth, had discouraged this habit however, urging her to take pride in her appearance. Fur-tail had always loved how supportive of her he had been, even when she had decided to become a sellsword; which made his murder all the more devastating. He had encouraged her to take up the profession that had gotten him killed.
Refusing a contract had rarely been an issue for the freelance warrior-for-hire. So long as she wasn't hurting anyone or anything she cared about, Fur-tail had few qualms. In a place like Takenuma, you couldn't afford to be choosy about your work. However, there were some lines even she would not cross, although, in retrospect, she wished she had.
Kami-killing did not bother her out of principle. The Kami War may have ended open hostilities between mortals and spirits, but it certainly hadn't eliminated them entirely. Fur-tail had personally killed four of them, and been hired for jobs in which others had done the deed as well.
The tragedy had arisen when she had been approached to destroy the patron kami of the nezumi.
It was the Uramon gang that approached her, though she suspected that they were merely facilitators for some bigger player. Not that the Uramon crew were small-timers, far from it. The predominantly human gang had endured for as long as the Umezawa clan; longer, now that the line had ended.
But not for much longer, if Fur-tail had anything to say about it.
No, her suspicions about the gang's true role in the affair were the result of the scale of the conflict brought about by the patron's death.
After killing her father for her refusal, the Uramon gang had approached another nezumi to complete the deed. Whispercoat had been his name. An ambitious rat, Whispercoat was the last of a disgraced line of a prominent nezumi family; whose father, it was said, had betrayed his people and conspired with the metal-armed human that had set a village ablaze. True to his blood, Whispercoat had gone against his people as well, and killed the large-toothed, nameless kami who acted as benefactor for all nezumi.
The treacherous assassin must have assumed he would be safe, given that he was backed by the Uramon gang, as well as his own superiors in the Mugen Zaibatsu, a criminal organization that, besides having a name Fur-tail thought pretentious, also had ties all over Kamigawa.
However, Whispercoat had not reckoned on the anger of his fellow rats. The fool had barely lasted a week before Fur-tail and a score of others tore him apart.
The death of the assassin did not end the violence, but only increased it. Both the Uramon gang and the Mugen Zaibatsu had taken reprisals of their own, igniting a veritable war in Takenuma of blood for blood.
Fur-tail was certain that a powerful party, perhaps a kami, was secretly reaping some kind of benefit from the bloodshed. It was this conclusion which had driven her on her current quest. To defeat a kami which had influence over at least one large criminal organization, would require assistance from another kami.
It was Whispercoat's death which had given her the idea. The fact that he was the last of his family line reminded her of the Umezawas, and their supposed ties to the Myojin of Night's Reach.
The Umezawa manor was still there, or at least, its ruins were. Located in a once prominent part of the human city of Numai, all that remained of the once great structure were the lower levels, through which Fur-tail now stalked.
Most of the rooms had been picked clean in the years since its destruction, but one basement chamber remained relatively untouched. This dank, moldy hall was clearly a shrine to Night, and so was not entirely desecrated. Given the presence of numerous candles of varying quality, it was clear to Fur-tail that she was not the first person to attempt to contact the powerful kami in the intervening years.
She had little hope of success. Why should she succeed, when so many others had failed to call the great spirit out of hiding?
Still, Fur-tail felt that she had come as prepared as she could be. The Umezawa clan had specialized in kanji magic for generations, so the nezumi supplicant had brushed up on her writing beforehand. She knew her kana, she was far from illiterate, but the more complex kanji were favored by the wealthier classes; which rarely included her fellow ratfolk.
In addition to her remedial preparations, Fur-tail was also optimistic because of her circumstances, dire though they were. Night could hardly ignore events that threatened to ignite another war could she?
Taking her time to meticulously inscribe the needed characters upon the floor in blood – her own, collected over several weeks – the rat woman then bowed her head to the floor in benediction.
"O Night, greatest of the Myojin," she intoned, "Takenuma needs you. Our land stands upon the brink of another war. Please, return! We-"
"Okay."
Fur-tail started at the other voice, reeling back from the floor and into a crouch. Sitting mere feet away, atop the broken wood and stone that once made up the room's shrine, was a hooded, masked figure.
Its approach, if indeed it had approached, had been silent.
"Night?" Fur-tail asked cautiously, holding the blood-soaked brush she had been drawing with like a dagger. "Is it truly you?"
"In a manner of speaking," the figure said, a trace of humor in its tone.
Fur-tail examined the apparition more closely. It was vaguely human shaped, though it was difficult to tell with its dark, wide-sleeved attire. White porcelain gleamed from beneath the hood. Squinting, she could just make out several pallid, ichorous hands floating behind it. That certainly matched the stories.
"Will you grant me power then, O Night?" Fur-tail asked, relaxing her stance slightly. "I want to stop whoever is truly behind this violence."
"And to satisfy your own revenge, of course," the figure said with a barking, masculine laugh. "But good for you, seeing that there's something else going on. You're rather clever for a nezumi."
Renewing her hold on the bloody brush and fingering the hilt of the knife at her belt, Fur-tail tensed again. Something was off. Night's Reach was female. She was certain of that.
"Reveal yourself, whoever you are! Enough games!"
Another, decidedly male chuckle issued from beneath the hood. "Oh, very well."
The human, or at least the thing shaped like one, drew back his hood, revealing a face partially covered in a bleached, broken mask. The cracked, false face appeared fused with his actual one, obscuring, or perhaps replacing, its right side and encroaching towards the left as well. Above the waxen portion of the mask was a red emblem with the kanji for 'night' emblazoned on it. To its side was a cylindrical stump of the same color, which might have once been a horn.
The man's face, what was visible or left of it, was clever and sharp-featured. Fur-tail had seen dozens of men like him in Takenuma. He had a criminal's devious self-confidence etched into his appearance. Based on the bags under his exposed eye, his receding hair, and the salt-and-pepper beard he sported, she placed him somewhere in his late prime; not yet an old man, but no longer a young one.
"You're not the Myojin," Fur-tail said flatly, drawing her knife and pointing with it accusatorily.
"Not the one you're thinking of," the stranger said, his smirk threatening to turn into a full-fledged grin. "What's left of the Night Kamigawa knew, is now a part of me."
After tapping the porcelain portions of his face, he stood and spread his flared sleeves wide, an action mirrored by the spectral limbs floating behind him.
"I am the Myojin of Night's Reach…" he pronounced dramatically, before resuming a more casual stance and winking at her. "…but you can call me Toshi."