Hajun strives to make out any potential customers through the growing darkness. Around him, stretched to streets of Itano, lit by the dim glow of lanterns. Most of the vendors and buyers who had arrived for market day had retired to taverns or rented rooms for the night so the main road running through the town was deserted save for hastily erected and equally hastily deserted stalls and a few tired eyed vendors desperate to make a last sale or two before calling it a night. Hajun feels his back ache from the day's exertions. He hates to admit it, but he may be getting to be too old to haul the loaded cart over to Itano. Next year he may need to teach his son how to make the trip, how to set up the stand, and how to make the most profit off of the rice that they grew for a living...
He is snapped from his thoughts by motion in the darkness that blankets the road ahead of him. He sees a shadowy figure that becomes better defined as it steps closer to the glow of one of the lanterns. The stranger is wrapped in a dark cloak of some kind that obscures their body and shrouds their face in shadows, though Hajun's failing eyesight can barely make out a weather beaten face with ionian features and a rough stubble on his chin suggesting that he hasn't shaved recently. Hajun can't make out any weapons through the cloak that the man wears but is gait is clearly that of a trained fighter.
"Good evening, Samurai," Hajun greets the man, bowing as far as his stand allows him to. The man tenses up slightly and Hajun is worried for a moment that he guessed the man's rank incorrectly thus insulting him but it passes quickly and the farmer settles down. The Samurai seems alright so he decides to push his luck a bit and try to sell a bit more of his rice before he returns home, "You seem to be traveling, care to buy some rice to eat on the road?" The Samurai is silent and reaches under his cloak to his waist. Hajun panics as the stranger reaches for where his sword should be but instead of a drawn blade, the Samurai takes out a small pouch from which he carefully counts a few coins and hands them to the farmer. Hajun gingerly takes the coins and hands the Samurai one of the bags of rice he prepared before leaving for the town. The Samurai places the bag in a satchel that he hides under his cloak and walks off in the direction of the nearest tavern. "Good luck on your lord's business!" Hajun calls after him. The Samurai looks at him over his shoulder and chuckles humorlessly. Hajun realizes that this is the first sound that he has heard the stranger utter.
The Samurai continues in a serious tone, "Thank you but it has been a long time since I served a master, my business here is my own."
Hajun thinks to himself, "How is he unemployed; with the threat of another Noxian invasion, any lord would count themselves blessed at the chance to add another trained Samurai to their retinue". "Bah! That is for them to worry about, I have my own worries," he reminds himself as he bends down to add the gold coins to his strongbox, feeling a dull ache from his back. Because he's bending over, he misses the dim shadow that darts along of the rooftops of the line of buildings opposite him.
The ronin opens the door to the tavern and ducks inside, letting the familiar sights and sounds wash over him. Farmers, merchants, and members of all walks of life gather here to relax after a long day and celebrate or mourn the events of the day. He makes his way through the tavern to the bartender, nimbly dodging around a stumbling drunkard, and plops a few coins down of the bar, asking for a cup of his best sake. The tavern keeper, half asleep from exhaustion and maybe a bit too much to drink is startled but takes the coins and retrieves a bottle from the shelf behind him to pour the drink. He usually prefers to spend light on provisions but he's been out in the wilderness for two weeks or so and by now a good drink and soft bed seems like paradise. As he gets up to walk to the far corner, someone bumps into him, almost making him drop the wooden mug containing his drink. He see's that it is a young man with his hair coiled into a warrior's braid and a sheathed sword resting openly at his hip. His unfocused eyes and unsteady gaze suggests a few too many drinks as he look at the wanderer waiting for his reaction.
Without thinking, his mind calculates the right motion to draw his sword and cut down the drunken swordsman without spilling his sake but he casts the thought aside. A few years ago, he might have cut the man down without hesitation for the offense but now he can see how this drunken, cocksure, swordsman is who he used to be. A sword school might teach one how to wield a sword, history, court protocol, or anything else one might need to become a Samurai but some lessons can only be learned with age. Age and far too much blood, he thinks regretfully. He ignores the unspoken challenge and takes a seat in the far corner.. He takes a sip from his drink, taking a moment to savor the taste before letting it burn down his throat. Despite his request to the tavern keeper, he doubts that this is his best sake, maybe third best, but after two weeks on and off the road, with only boiled water to drink, it tasted like the finest concoction from the Placidarium. He continues nursing the cup while carefully observing his surroundings from his corner. After things have stayed calm for a few minutes, the ronin decides that he can risk spending the night in civilization.
He is about to stand and walk over to the owner to see if any rooms are available for rent when the door is slammed open and an intimidating figure stalks in, wearing a dark cloak with red and black armor visible underneath. He carries no visible weapons and isn't especially large, even with the armor adding to his stature, but his sheer presence makes the crowded bar wordlessly clear a path for him. He silently paces to the center of the room before casting off his cloak to reveal fine ionian features twisted in determination and anger and marred only by a set of jagged scars running along one cheek left by some sort of huge animal. He wears black and crimson armor of an unknown make and as the bar watches in stunned silence, he draws a cruel looking sickle from his belt with a chain dangling from the bottom to his belt. He glances around the room, his gaze seeming to pierce into the Swordsman's soul. The armored warriors stabs the blade of his sickle into the floor and it is wreathed in shadowy flames that writhe over the surface of the weapon and sizzle against the floor. "I am Vaul of the order of shadows," he announces to the room with calm menace, "and I have come for your head, Yasuo.
The ronin curses to himself at the unexpected turn of events before drawing a nodachi from under his cloak and tipping back his hood to reveal rugged features hardened by the road and eyes that seem far older than the rest of him. "If you've come to kill me," Yasuo begins, taking a last swig from his drink before pouring the rest over his blade, "I hope you brought friends."
-Five Minutes Earlier-
Vaul leaps from one rooftop to the roof of the tavern, his specially designed boots muffling the noise of his landing and finding a grip on the loose shingles. He's tracked his target ot the room below him and now vengeance is finally within his grasp. He crouches down on the perch, the shadows merging with his cloak, and reflects on what brought him here as he checks his weapons one last had been lying in wait for an hour when the family returned to the house. Normally, they would have been there when he arrived but they must have needed to go somewhere, maybe to meet their daughter who would have her leave from the Ionian Royal Guard start today. When he saw the elderly couple round the bend, he longed to run out and embrace his parents but his sense of duty help him back. As part of the Kinkou, he hadn't been allowed to see his family in order to remind him that he wasn't purely part of the human world anymore. The Order of Shadows encouraged such visits, "to remember what we fight for," but Zed had still made the decision that member would still have to avoid contact with anyone who would recognize them. "We are shadows, we can watch, we can bee seen, but we cannot be touched. Some do not agree with out methods and so we must remain anonymous," he remembers Zed saying to the fledgling order right after the schism. Because of this, he restrained the urge to reveal himself as alive and remained hidden in the bush near the path he had camouflaged himself in, waiting for his sister to step into view.
He was two years younger than her but they had learned to fight together and played and sparred in the forest outside of town. When she came of age, she had left for a sword school and they had promised to meet again once they had both become Samurai before joining the guard to earn honor like the warriors of legend they had grown up hearing of. Then a few years later, he made the mistake of helping the wrong stranger and was given the choice of joining the Kinkou or death. It had nearly killed him to fake his own death and break his promise, just as it had hurt her to learn of his apparent death. After the schism, he had found opportunities to watch as she joined the guard and slowly climbed the ranks, silently supporting her but unable to contact her, even just to let her know he was alive. She took her leave from the guard at this time each year so he made sure to be there to silently welcome her home.
This thought had been in his mind when his parents were followed around the bend by a squad of guards in dress uniforms, carrying a plain but elegant coffin between them. Any doubt towards the identity of the occupant of the coffin that his mind tried to form was dispelled by the sergeant giving a short and obviously well practiced speech and the coffin being opened to reveal her body, garbed in the simple tunic she wore under her guard armor and with a dressed but obviously deep slash across her chest. It had taken some work, but he managed to find out what had happened. Her company had cornered a traitor from the Noxian invasion and tried to arrest him. It didn't end well.
Zed had taken some convincing but he knew Vaul's past and given how many Ionians Yasuo had killed over the last two years, he was a threat that needed to be dealt with. A month of gathering information, tracking down reports, and traveling later and he had found the killer. He carefully replaces the last shuriken at his belt and jumps down to the street below. He takes a deep breath and satisfied with his readiness, kicks the door wide open and strides in as silent as a shadow.
-The Present-
The crowd, already terrified by Vaul's presence, begins to scatter at the sight of the face that has covered wanted posters all over Ionia for years, leaving the tavern through the door or windows, whichever is closer. The young samurai who had tried to provoke the cloaked ronin earlier, stares over his shoulder at him, realizing he had tried to pick a fight with one of the most infamous warriors in all of Ionia.
Yasuo swiftly undoes the pin of his cloak, allowing it to slide to the floor, and bows to Vaul. His foe seems caught off guard by the gesture but returns it a heartbeat later. Vaul straightens up and makes an exaggerated gesture of blowing, similar to blowing out a candle, before all the torches go out, plunging the tavern into shadows cast by the fireplace whose light dims but isn't completely extinguished. Yasuo assumes a combat stance, with his sword in front of him, ready to parry. As he stands still, he begins to gather the wind around him while waiting for Vaul to make a move, not wanting to commit to an attack until he can determine the ninja's fighting style. Vaul does not disappoint, charging at Yasuo to slash him with his sickle. The ronin's superior reach allows him to knock the sickle to the side easily but then he needs to leap backwards to avoid a swing at his torso of the other end of the chain, weighted with a metal ball. Vaul doesn't let up with his assault, throwing a fan of shuriken at Yasuo.
The Unforgiven swings his blade like a conductor's baton, sending forth a strong gust of wind that knocks the flying blades aside. His attention is then drawn by a hissing sound from the floor. He glances down to see another shuriken stuck into the ground in front of him with a small parcel attached with a burning fuse. He is forced to dodge backwards again as the shuriken explodes into a blast of smoke and fire, the wave of force buffeting even from a distance. He steadies himself and searches the room for Vaul who has vanished. "Ninjas, I hat those guys," the swordsman mutter to himself. He catches the shadow of a table that seems slightly off to him out of the corner of his eye and begins to pace in it's general direction, trying to make it seem that hasn't noticed it. When he gets within ten feet of the shadow, he suddenly pivots to face it and stabs toward it, the stab being extended by a scything blast of wind. The table's shadow distorts as Vaul springs away from it, only being grazed by the blast of wind. A small trickle of blood runs from his shoulder but the shadowy warrior ignores it, focused solely on his foe. Yasuo immediately follows up the stab by rushing at Vaul, propelled by the wind, preparing a slash with his nodachi.
Vaul jumps to the side and lands with his feet on the wall, anchored in place by shadowy energy surrounding his feet and somehow seeming perfectly balanced. Without missing a beat, Vaul continues running along the wall before flipping onto the ceiling and swinging the weighted chain downwards towards Yasuo. Fighting an enemy who is walking on the ceiling catches the ronin off guard but his years of wandering and fighting all sorts of bounty hunters allow him to catch the weight on the flat of his sword and knock it aside. He realizes his mistake when his attacker vanishes into shadows and he detects a disturbance in the air flow behind him; he dives forwards but not fast enough to avoid a cut to his upper back. It would have been worse but the shell of wind he had gathered around himself absorbed the worst of the blow before dissipating. He spins around to face Vaul and whips his sword towards him from the side. Vaul dodges easily by jumping backwards, onto the ceiling but he can't avoid the whirling tornado that rips up the floor as it rushes towards him. Right before it sucks him in, he hears Yasuo call out, "Aseryo!"
He is battered by the wind and debris before being spat out later along its path into one of the still intact tables. The tornado continues going and punches a hole through the back wall of the tavern as he rises, dazed, from the wreckage of the table. Yasuo immediately dashes over the fragments of wood covering the tavern floor to unleash an overhead slash while shouting, "Ton!" The ninja barely holds the sword in check with the blade of his sickle as he addresses The Unforgiven through gritted teeth, "I will not... lose... so easily!" With the last words, he throws down a smoke bomb with his free hand and leaps clear, allowing the explosive shuriken he had planted before the clash of blades to detonate, enveloping Yasuo once more in smoke and flame. As the disgraced samurai stumbles out of the smoke, coughing, the ninja sweeps his chain in a wide arc around himself and slams the weighted end into Yasuo's midsection. The samurai barely catches the incoming attack through the smoke and can only roll with the impact to minimize the damage.
Yasuo's ribs scream from the force of the blow and he winces as he lands but he still stands back up, ready for more. The fighting stops for a moment as the two fighters circle each other, waiting for an opening. Yasuo breaks the silence by addressing Vaul, "So, why are you after me? Money? Honor? Some sense of justice?"
Vaul glares back at him with cold hatred, "My sister was in the guard, she devoted her life to defending Ionia and you killed her, traitor." Yasuo flinches at the last word and Vaul continues," Do you even remember her face as you killed her? Do you remember any of the Ionians you've murdered?"
The ninja's words cut through Yasuo like knives as he searches his memories for a similar face only to find that they all blur together, until he can only see Yone's bloody face, staring back at him in disappointment. He is flooded with shame at this but at the same time rage at Vaul for presuming to judge him without having gone through what he has. With an inarticulate shout, he charges forward with his Nodachi held high for a death blow.
Vaul manages to catch the overhead swing on his chain by holding both ends of it but is forced backwards by the flurry of attacks that follows it. He leaps over a table to get some space and then flips upward onto the ceiling, his key instinctively anchoring his feet. Using one of the order's techniques, he slips into the shadow of a rafter and feels the now familiar chill as he emerges behind the bar, narrowly dodging a thrust of wind. With the temporary element of surprise, the ninja prepares to strike with the sickle portion of his kusarigama while shadows begin to gather around the blade, forming a scythe like structure.
"Scurry back to your shadows, ninja," Yasuo taunts towards the shadows that fill the room, trying to draw out his opponent now that he's partially calmed down. He glances around the room, trying to catch a glimpse of Vaul, with his sword held at the ready. Silence briefly fills the room and then the ronin snaps around, detecting a disturbance in the air flow behind him.
"Fall traitor!" Vaul shouts as he swings his sickle downwards, mirrored by a wave of shadowy energy that crashes down upon the swordsman. Yasuo attempts to block but the shadows simply flow around the keen blade. At the last second, Yasuo forces the air flowing through the room into a fast moving barrier of wind that blasts forwards, the shadows dispersing around it. "Face the wind!" the Unforgiven shouts, as the residue energy blasts the surrounding area to dust and flying splinters but leaves him unharmed. Without wasting a second, he sheathes his sword and starts channeling the wind from the wall and explosion into his blade with one hand on the hilt and the other on the sheath, preparing to draw. Both warriors are momentarily unable to see the other but a disruption in the air flow allows Yasuo to detect Vaul circling around for a killing blow on an enemy he expects to be disabled.
"Hasagi!" the ronin shouts in ancient Ionian, as he flicks his blade forward from its sheath releasing a far larger whirlwind than the first one that blasts forth from the cloud of dust, swallowing up Vaul and launching him through the wall of the tavern and skyward. Before the stunned eyes of the crowd that had gathered outside the Tavern, Yasuo leaps out of the hole in the tavern wall to intercept Vaul in mid air. A blast of wind suspends them both while forcing the nearest onlookers to the ground as Yasuo raises his nodachi. Vaul manages to catch the first strike on his weapon but he is too off balance to completely avoid the second which traces along his face, cutting a thin line across it that bleeds profusely. Yasuo aims the third slash to cut open his torso but suddenly he sees Yone's dead stare looking back at him. He deflects the blow to the side at the last second slicing Vaul's hip but not killing him before they both fall to the ground; Yasuo landing smoothly with his sword sheathed and Vaul landing with a thud, bleeding badly with a nasty looking cut to the upper leg which also appears broken from the fall. He tries to stand but can't, only able to glare at Yasuo from the ground. "Sorye ge ton!" Yasuo shouts as he lands. Vaul's face is a mess, with blood dripping from the cut but he still manages to glare back at Yasuo.
"Finish this," he hisses at Yasuo through gritted teeth.
"I have too much blood on my sword already," Yasuo murmurs to him,"I don't need to add another face to the list."
Vaul keeps glaring but Yasuo turns around and walks away. Yasuo walks down the deserted street after leaving a pile of coins on the counter of the bar. It wouldn't be nearly enough for repairs but it was all he could afford to give. He would have liked to stay the night but that wasn't really an option as he had just blown his cover in a rather magnificent fashion. In a well practiced routine, he sets up camp a bit off the road and sits down to think. "Sorye ge Ton - ancient Ionian for to raise towards the dawn. Raising his sword towards the light as if to say, I won't just give up, I'll keep going until I reach my redemption. That or death, whichever he reaches first. "I will follow this path until the end, brother," Yasuo whispers, "so this isn't all a waste.
Author's Note:
Alright, I finally stopped procrastinating and published this! This is my first time writing a story that's not for school so feedback would be appreciated. The cover art is by the talented OrekiGenya and used with her permission, if you want to see more then check her out on deviantart.
Also, some fun facts about this:
This started out as a one shot that I just wrote to try writing a fight scene and I just enjoyed it so much that I decided to make a whole story about it.
The initial fight scene was written in December 2016 and I've just been working on the story on and off since then.
Vaul, the second in command to Zed in the order of shadows, used to be called Kane but then riot releases Kayn, the likely successor/second in command to Zed in the order of shadows so I figured I just might have to change his name.
Best of luck to anyone who bothered to read this and see you in the next chapter hopefully!