Day, night, whatever it was didn't matter. Kenshi lifted from a deep sleep into another wake cycle. He took a deep breath and felt the sword on his chest, unsheathed, sharp enough to cut the thin fabric he slept in, but it never did.
Back in its sheath, Sento beckoned Kenshi to move through the foothills of Japan, toward a tree line far in the distance. Each step though his own seemed forced by the sword from the distance each foot took from one another to the direction they made. This was simply the journey he needed to make.
In his dreams he heard an unfamiliar voice lure him to a spot called The Bone Eaters Well. If this is where Sento would take him, he would go, but the voice was not just in his dreams. It followed him in every blade of grass he crushed beneath his boots, and every bark of tree he touched as he passed deeper into the forests.
There we will see you.
His hand lowered from bark to hilt as the tree line broke and the scar of land opened up for him. The fabric taut around his eyes, he let the blade guide every step until he touched what felt like moss on stone and then the hard surface of stone itself.
The surface continued in a circular pattern and had two edges, dull on one end and sharper on the other. There was no wood to indicate a well where water could be retrieved, but the dull edge fell into a deep abyss the blade forbade him from reaching into.
Starting from the wrist, his veins pulsed and beat louder and faster as it traveled up and through his body. Sento could sense something was near.
Kenshi halted all movement. Instead of touch, he let his ears search his surroundings. There was nothing at first, just the silence of the forest but the longer he listened, the louder an oddly familiar sound came from deep within the well.
Crying.
It sounded like a woman and he reached, despite the pulse of the blade that held tight to his hand. He reached for a rope he swore was not there at first, but pulled. He could hear a woman trapped within a well and felt her tug on the rope like dead weight that needed his rescue.
He felt flesh, bare skin and cheeks of tears that crumpled over the edge. He could tell she was nude, he hair long and cast like water down her back and chest.
"Thank you!" She cried and held him.
One hand reached around her, but the other still determined to connect with Sento struggled with the pull the blade had on him. How could it be that this woman was a threat? He saved her.
However, had Sento ever been wrong?
"Hold me." She cried and her arms wrapped around his shoulders like a lover would. Her breasts against his chest, her body warm despite having lingered in the dark cold recess of the well.
That was the first sign.
Her breath was hot to his skin and her flesh comforting, and warm to the touch. He could melt in it if she let him. Forever even, if he let himself.
One hand around her waist, the other on the hilt of the blade that struggled to keep him still.
"What's your name?" He asked when he motioned to partition distance between them with his hand that raised to her shoulder. "How long have you been here?"
"I can't think straight right now, just hold me." Strange, and she grasped him again. This time, her warmth encompassed him, his heart beat faster and his free hand lowered to the small of her back.
This was wrong.
She was. Wrong.
"Be in me, Kenshi." She whispered into his ear.
His pulse became erratic as it fought Sento and the woman whom each tugged on him. He wasn't sure if it was the physical contact that he had not felt in so long, or the idea of the warmth and comfort she offered. The embrace she gave, but it was all wrong. Why if it wasn't right did he feel the need to give in?
The hand on the hilt tightened and began to slowly pull the blade free of its confines.
"You wouldn't hurt me, would you?" She noticed and held tighter. "I've been alone for so long, and I know you have too."
"Let go of me." He warned. Calmly at first.
Her embrace never seemed threatening, in fact quite the opposite. It invited him more and more until when he tried to move his hand from the small of her back he had felt his fingers almost melded to her flesh. He was being absorbed into her. The ecstasy of her flesh, and necessity of her love pulled him deeper and deeper into her.
Sento freed itself through his hand and with a simple roll of the wrist, cut her embrace and arms. He pulled back, the loss of that connection cut deep down his throat with a hard cold gasp of air that choked him. The apathetic world rushed to his head and he felt himself yet again, enough to control the blade and aim it precisely between the eyes.
"What is this?" She cried. "Why must we fight? I love you!"
"You're not human." He realized, though he could not see what truly held him before.
The flesh that fell from his shoulders puddled around him when he had stepped over it.
"I am whatever you need me to be."
His heart rate began to settle and his movement precise as he struck her wit the blade and landed cleanly between the second and third rib. Right in the heart.
She gasped.
She cried.
She reached out with hands that desperately sought his touch. Perhaps if she could just touch him one more time, he'd stay with her. He'd understand what she had to offer the Ronin.
Another swing and the woman's head ceased its tears and slashed into the stagnate pool of dead water deep in the well. It rustled the bones left inside, the skeletons he would never see, never know as his brethren now that she had been slain.
Sento, sated, returned to its sheath, but he was not ready to relax.
We see you, Kenshi.
He could hear the voice of his dreams like the rustle of the trees all around him. It wasn't a single voice, but many. He spoke with only one.
"Are you who I seek?"
We are.
"Where are you?"
In the cave, seven cycles east, as you call them.
Sento pulsed.
His blood raced and his body felt alive for the very first time since he embarked on this strange journey.
He would soon reach his destination.
Who he was, what's to come, all of it in his grasp.