Chapter Ten: The Dragon Lineage
'The history of the Dark Dragon Blade is tied up in the very history of our universe. It is a primal force of evil. Thus I must begin at the beginning of all things.
In the beginning, no one can agree on what happened.
Our own beliefs are one of many. We know that Gurdu came out of the chaos and created order. But everyone else has a different interpretation that developed in their own regions.
The Abrahamic religions believe the universe was called into being. Created by an all-powerful entity. Others believe that the world has always existed. There are a myriad of different opinions on the subject.
What almost all religions can agree on is that something went wrong.
The Abrahamic religions are the closest to our own in this regard. Like us, they believe that there was an entity created by the ultimate being. This entity sought to destroy and maim all that existed in an effort to rule over creation.
Where we differ is in the nature of that entity. We believe that Gurdu overlooked one area of chaos. In that area, a reaction to Gurdu's order culminated in the first evil deity. Vigoor, who all fiends are descended from. Christians, on the other hand, have a different story. They believe that Satan, was created by God and made the highest of all beings and named Lucifer. But in his pride, he felt he ought to rule in God's place. Thus he rebelled against God. He was cast down into hell after being defeated by another angel, Michael.
As usual, they are wrong. Anyone with any sense know that Gurdu split himself into the four deities. Wolf, Serpent, Devil, and Raptor, all but one of whom was driven insane.
Christians are eccentric, though. They maintain that God is totally omnipotent. In their mythology, Satan's quest was well and truly hopeless. He could only rebel because God allowed it. His rebellion was defeated without God needing to lift a finger. In their mind, God is all-powerful, unstoppable, and cannot be thwarted. Unless he allows himself to be thwarted.
This of course, begs the question of why so many terrible things happen in the world. There are a lot of theologians who have attemped to resolve this issue. Some have been more successful than others. Some of these arguments are contained behind this note.
For the present, we have no time for it.
The point is, that our belief is that evil is an integral part of creation. It cannot be removed without creation failing. However, there is an alternate perspective which could be held. That evil is a corruption of something already good. This is absolutely central to my plan for destroying the Dark Dragon Blade, so remember it.
At any rate, whatever the ultimate source, we do know that the Heavenly Dragons came into being. And there was a powerful evil entity they fought. We call it Vigoor, Christians call it Satan, there are dozens of words for it. Whatever it was, it ended up dead at the end of the war.
The Heavenly Dragons then set about restoring order to the world. Life emerged, leading to the creation of mankind.
I think we all know how that worked out.
Vigoor held on to life through the envy of the weakest Heavenly Dragon. This creature hated his apparent inferiority to the others. The inverse of the tale of Lucifer. Whatever his nature, however, the Dark Dragon was possessed by the spirit of Vigoor. He disrupted the efforts of his brethren and brought forth the fiends. He gathered great power to himself in the place where the Vigoor Empire now stands.
Using his armies, the Dark Dragon killed his brethren and began a rule of tyranny over the world. He was less primal than Vigor, content to enslave the world, rather than destroy it.
He was defeated by a warrior of the Dragon Lineage, wielding the Dragon Sword.
I should clarify that when I say 'the Dragon Sword' I do not mean the blade your father wields. That sword is a katana, and at the time all this was taking place, katanas hadn't been invented yet. By 'Dragon Sword', I imagine that they mean a weapon infused with the Eye of the Dragon. Perhaps a cave man's club?
Truth be told though, I'm not even sure that it was a member of the Dragon Lineage. Ancient histories have a tendency to color the truth to form a narrative. At the time these events took place, writing hadn't been invented. Any stories were oral.
I find it far more likely that the Dark Dragon was killed by his brethren. Then the fiends managed to hunt down the other Heavenly Dragons. I believe this, because the fiends became the dominant power in the world, ruling as gods. Zeus, Odin, Set, all these entities had truly massive levels of power and the ability to shapeshift. It is no wonder they were mistaken for gods.
Lesser fiends can be killed by ordinary mortals. To the ancient people's, Greater Fiends must have seemed like gods.
Whatever the case, humans had one advantage. They could reproduce quickly. Fiends, in contrast, are parasites, that must feed off the misery and hatred of mankind to live. Lesser fiends are more powerful than the average human, but much less intelligent.
So, as human civilization organized, it began to take on a life independent of the fiends who ruled over them. At the same time, the various fiend pantheons ended up destroying each other. When the Romans crushed the Gauls, the human population bounced back in a few generations. But all the false gods the Romans destroyed in the name of their false gods stayed dead.
Then Emperor Constantine pulled the rug out from under the entire rotting institution. The fiend pantheons were rendered powerless over the course of what, to them, was a very short period of time. All their efforts to reestablish their old dominions were wasted. They found themselves being passed by. The Roman Empire became a very real threat to them.
If a Christian Roman Empire were to continue expanding, who could foresee the result? The fiends in the other regions of the world looked at their own territories. They realized they might suffer a similar fate.
This is why Archfiend Vazdah made the Dark Dragon Blade.
Archfiend Vazdah was the most powerful of all the fiends. He was created first of them all and acted as a sort of High King if you will. He mediated disputes and was among the most cunning. And before you ask how I learned this, I had to go to the Dworku Monastery in Tairon. They have complete documentation, and it's surprisingly unbiased.
He found the body of the Dark Dragon and forged it into a sword that fed off the blood and wars of men. He then gave it to a member of the Dragon Lineage in China, a wise man named Dagra Dai, and let him start a reign of blood. At the same time, the wars of Rome fueled the blade. It created many new fiends. The result was a neverending tide of enemies that causes a mass exodus from east to west.
This mass exodus slammed into a weakened Roman Empire, and the rest is history.
I know I'm focusing a lot on the west, but we've already studied the east until our eyes drooped under our tutors. This is the region you are least likely to know about. And I am coming to a point, as always.
At any rate, this is where we enter the story. Our Clan were not always ninjas. At one time, before the coming of foreign influences, we dwelled as samurai rulers. You may recall some of the ancient ruins we explored as children. They are remnants of this Hayabusa Lordship, as if the fortress which our village is built in the shadow of.
But at the time I'm speaking of we neither possessed the Dark Dragon Blade or the True Dragon Sword. This is one of the reasons I believe the story of us defeating the Dark Dragon to be revisionist history.
It is the True Dragon Sword can only be wielded by those of the Dragon Lineage. But the Hayabusa Clan is far from the only family that possesses such power. There were thirteen dragons after all, and all of them could take human form.
One family of descendants was known as Pendragon.
Uther Pendragon was a Roman Centurion who defended the island of Britain from the fiends. He reigned as King for some years after the empire collapsed. Eventually, however, he was killed. His son, Arthur, was hidden away from his enemies and later returned to press his claim. He succeeded in establishing himself as King. He defeated a number of foreign invaders, killing many fiends as well.
The story of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table is too long to recount here. What is important is that Arthur was gifted by an entity known as the Lady of the Lake with a sword called Excalibur. And inlaid on it was the Eye of the Dragon.
Arthur quickly became a legend. He and his knights did more than unify Britain. He purged most of the fiends and then went across the English Channel to do the same there. He rapidly established a mighty empire called Camelot. It was renown as a place of great beauty and justice. Once again, the Archfiend had cause for concern.
However, Dagrai Dai managed to engineer the downfall of Camelot by proxy. Arthur had a half-sister, Morgana Le Fey, who seduced him in disguise and conceived a son. This son was named Mordred, and he engineered a civil war and then made a bid for the throne. Arthur replied by decimating his army and plunging Excalibur into his black heart. But Mordred drove his spear through Arthur. Thus that branch of the Dragon Lineage was made extinct.
Dagra Dai then transformed Morgana into a fiend in recognition for her services. She took on a new name, Elizabet. Doubtless thought the matter settled. He was wrong.
For Arthur entrusted Excalibur to Bedivere and ordered him to return the sword to the Lady of the Lake. Bedivere did so. But the Lady of the Lake gave back the Eye of the Dragon and asked Bedivere to find another of the Dragon Lineage.
So began the last quest of the Knights of the Round Table. Bedivere traveled far and wide for years upon years. He came to China, but Dagra Dai had exterminated his own family to prevent them from turning against him. At last, Bedivere came to Japan.
By then he was an old man, beneath the notice of the Archfiend, who thought himself victorious. But Bedivere found what he was looking for in the Hayabusa Clan of Samurai. He was given hospitality, and passed it to the Head of our Clan and died that very day. Your ancestor took up the Eye of the Dragon and set it into a sword, the one your father now wields. With its power he began a campaign to purge the fiends from the east.
Bedivere's actions more than avenged Camelot.
Our ancestor one by one hunted down the most powerful fiends in Japan and killed them. He sent their spirits back to the underworld. When he had finished that he started working on China and other lands. His quest even brought him into eastern Europe. And nothing anyone could do could stop him.
At last, the Archfiend himself fell. Only Dagra Dai and Elizabet escaped his wrath. They have been in hiding for centuries.
Our ancestor then sealed the gates to the underworld, and he infused the seal in a statue. A stature he named the Demon Statue. It was stowed away and has now been lost to history. No one knows where it is.
Unfortunately, our ancestor grew proud. They decided he should rule over the world as the price for saving it. He began a war of conquest. The Eye of the Dragon rejected him, however, and so his ambitions were thwarted. And he was forced to flee into exile while his clan was reduced to shambles, the Dragon Blade taken from him.
But he was not to give up so easily.
The unending bloodshed he had unleashed caused the Dark Dragon Blade to call out to him. He found the blade and took it up, and wielding it he summoned armies of fiends to do his bidding. Armies were destroyed by his onslaught. His skill at arms attracted the attention of Ishtaros and Nicchae. They were the Fiends of Creation and Destruction. For they were the Archfiend's sisters, and they had not been involved in the war. They became his chief lieutenants, and together they carved a swath of destruction. They brought the worship of the two goddesses to all they conquered. At the point of a sword, if necessary.
But the one time head of the Hayabusa Clan had unfinished business. He returned to Japan at the head of a great fleet. There he met his son, Genshin, in battle, and that same son was wielding the True Dragon Sword. In the ensuing battle, he was killed. The Dark Dragon Blade was seized and sealed within our village for safekeeping. It was kept hidden, and the Hayabusa's adopted the ways of stealth and shadow.
This rogue Hayabusa's name has been lost to history. His name was blotted out of every record I could find. But the empire he created did not fall. Ishtaros and Nicchae chose another to lead it. They ordered the citizens to worship him as well, and the Vigoor Empire was born.
There are several things to take away from this.
First, there are very few members of the Dragon Lineage left in the world. The Hayabusa Clan and the Black Spider Ninja Clan are all that remain in Japan. And we've been at each other's throats for decades. There may be a few others in hiding in some distant land, but I've found no record of them. America may possess a few, but if so they keep is secret. As a result, the people capable of wielding the True Dragon Sword are limited.
In contrast, the Dark Dragon Blade has no end of potential wielders. Any fiend or person with the bloodline of a fiend can wield it since all fiends are of the bloodline of the Dark Dragon. Nor does it discriminate between wielders, it will use anyone for its purposes.
The result of this is clear:
We are running out of time. No matter how skilled the Hayabusa Clan is, sooner or later our bloodline will go extinct. We might attempt to have more children. Or attempt cloning, but the former would dilute the bloodline. And the latter would require resources we do not have. We would need to go to one of the major governments such as the US.
While this might solve the problem of the fiends, it could also result in disaster. Humans can be just as vicious and destruction as demons when they put their mind to it. Any nation we imparted the Dragon Bloodline to would create super soldiers. Nationalism and the blood of gods do not mix well.
Both of these ideas are worthy of consideration.
I believe the best way to solve this problem is to end the conflict permanently. If the Dark Dragon Blade is destroyed, then in a sense, the world no longer needs us. While we might still be of great service, our chief watch will have ended. Humanity will eventually be able to destroy or thwart the fiends by its own power. Why would the Vigoor Empire hide its true nature if it did not fear the human superpower?
And for all the power of the Dark Dragon Blade, we have one advantage.
It is a parasite.
The legends speak of the Dark Dragon Blade and the True Dragon Sword as equals and opposites. But I do not believe this is the case. It is true that both rise to power around the same time. As the Dark Dragon Blade grows in strength, so too does the Eye of the Dragon find a wielder.
But the Eye of the Dragon is its own source of power. It doesn't give it to just anyone, but the power is always there. It can be used at any time once one is worthy. The Dark Dragon Blade, in contrast, is powerless without chaos and carnage. The more wicked deeds are performed, the more powerful it becomes.
In a sense, a world where the Dark Dragon Blade can win is one where it deserves to win.
But it requires constant momentum to maintain its power. This is why every wielder of the Dark Dragon Blade has failed. They gain many great victories for a time, but they can never rest and consolidate their gains. They must go on and on, creating a wasteland of misery and blood. They may slow their conquests and be destroyed. Or they overextend their hand and lose it.
The Dark Dragon Blade will not care either way. It may find a new wielder from among those who defeated the old. Dagra Dai is the only person to wield the Dark Dragon Blade and live, and he only managed that because he gave it up willingly.
In a sense, the Dark Dragon Blade is the wielder, not the warrior. You may swing it, but it is the true master. The True Dragon Sword allows only the worthy to wield it but aids them without end. One serves. The other enslaves. One leads to utter destruction. The other provides salvation.
Those who wield the Dark Dragon Blade will never succeed in their conquests. The sword's insatiable thirst will never be sated. And those who wield the True Dragon Sword will never want to conquer or rule over anyone.
And yet neither can destroy the other.
When the Hayabusa Clan gained control of the Dark Dragon Blade we attempted to destroy it. But it would not break. Not even the Dragon Sword could scratch its surface. Even when the blade was powerless it could not be broken.
I have often wondered why this was, and I have developed a theory.
When Vigoor came into being he and Gurdu were of absolute opposite kinds. Gurdu was wholly good, desiring only to order things for the benefit of the universe. He was a being of absolute power. It is conceivable he saw all things, the coming of humanity.
Meanwhile, Vigoor was an entity of pure malevolence and hatred.
They were of different domains. Neither had any experience with the others realm of power. I believe this was why Gurdu chose to divide himself. It may be that he desired to understand the thing which he faced so that he could tame or destroy it. So it was that he became manifest in many lesser entities, the four gods. And through them, he was manifest in the innumerable creatures that came after them.
One with no understanding of evil cannot hope to combat it. A thief catcher will never catch a criminal if he does not learn to understand their nature.
Which brings me to the thrust of my conclusion.
Genshin was the last known person to be worthy of the True Dragon Sword. And every record I have heard of him describes him as pure. He was kind to all who met him, humble and devoid of any taint. He wept for the death of his enemy and despised violence. He was, in every way, the antithesis to the Dark Dragon Blades' wielder.
Thus he had no power over it. For the Dark Dragon Blade represents an ideal. The idea of evil itself. And an idea cannot be destroyed by guns or swords. It must be discredited first, or those who die in its service are but martyrs.
Genshin was as pure good as the blade was evil. They were yin and yang. Neither able to overcome the other. And among the other members of the Clan, none could be found with the strength to even strike the blade.
I tried attacking the Dark Dragon Blade, once, Ryu. I took it out and tried to break it. My arm froze up and I found myself contemplating how best to use it for my own ends. Fortunately, there are very few ways an unholy sword of absolute evil can be used to sweep the shrine of leaves. I also got your father to try his luck.
He managed to strike it, after much meditation, but it did no good. The will of mankind alone cannot destroy evil. Neither can the True Dragon Sword.
I believe that there is only one way that the Dark Dragon Blade can be destroyed. It must be struck by a worthy wielder of the True Dragon Sword. An individual who understands the Dark Dragon Blade and rejects it. In this way, the Dark Dragon Blade might be destroyed.
Alternatively, we could try nuking it. If nothing else, World War II demonstrated that ideals are of very little use against the atom bomb. But I'd rather keep that as a plan B if it's all the same to you.
Enclosed within this package is a list of all my sources, as well as all relevant excerpts. Study them at length and if you have the time, I recommend you look into them yourself.
Anyway, I'm sorry I couldn't give this to you in person.
See you soon,
Kureha.
Ryu lowered the pages and looked out the window. Clouds were gathering overhead, foretelling a coming storm. His own descendants had paved the way for the Vigoor Empire? There was a bitter irony in that. Then again the Vigoor Empire was arguably preferable to what came before it. Fiends were fought in a shadow war that left the average person free from worry.
Better the shadows than the light.
Either way, what was he supposed to do with this? The True Dragon Sword had already rejected him.
He'd wait. Even if he wasn't worthy of it. Perhaps a future descendant of his might be. It was the least he could for her.
Carefully he slid the package under his bed and sighed.
There was a flash of lightning. A storm was coming. He just hoped he could weather it.
Author's Note:
So this chapter was largely exposition. This is actually important though. Not the least of which because it is necessary to explain the games ending. If it was possible to destroy the Dark Dragon Blade by hitting it with a katana I think somebody would have done it by now.