Chapter 1: An Intruder in the Palace

Sunlight filtered in through the shoji paper of the windows. It was a beautiful day outside. Aki could hear birds singing, children laughing. She imagined kites gliding on the breeze. And here she was indoors practicing calligraphy. 

Seventeen-year-old Aki sighed in boredom. She didn’t even realize it until the sigh had escaped her nostrils. By then it was too late and the calligraphy sensei, an old man who looked like the mythical tortoise Genbu, which had been around since the creation of the world, glared at her from above the thick frame of his rivet spectacles.

The glasses were basically magnifying lenses riveted together (hence the name) and were better-suited for scrutinizing the faint underwriting on the pages of dusty tomes in the Imperial Library. Supposedly they made the wearer over-dependent and as helpless as a mole without them, but the eyes of the sensei still looked like those of a hawk and felt like they could probe right into Aki’s sinful soul and then banish her to the netherworld. 

Aki stiffened in her half-sitting half-kneeling position in front of the floor desk. Although she was constantly at loggerheads with her tutors especially about what made a proper lady proper, mainly because she doubted very much that her senseis had any inkling of what that concept meant in this day and age, the tutors were acting under strict instructions from her grandfather. Now, her grandfather wasn’t someone she would want to cross. Her mother, Crown Princess Kiyo, she could reason with and disarm with her Puppy Eye Technique. But to go against her grandfather, Emperor and head of the imperial house, it would take a higher, and probably martial, skill.

{If only Father was alive,} Aki thought to herself and repressed another sigh that seemed to come from the lowest depths of her heart.

Her hand was moving the brush elegantly and fluidly above the parchment. Ideally, she was tracing the old strokes closer and closer to perfection, but in reality she was just going through the motions. According to the calligraphy sensei, perfecting her brushstrokes would lead to the improvement of her swordplay. If that was true, Aki thought, she’d be a master swordsman by now.

Her father, fallen heir to the Gold Lotus Throne, was the greatest swordsman of his time. He was killed in a cowardly attack by assassins of the Vulcanus (a.k.a. Salamander) Clan when Aki was just a child. She remembered more of that day than anything else about her father, which was kind of messed up but nothing she could remedy. 

At that time, the assassins from the Vulcanus Clan had transformed the Grand Hall into a sea of fire. The fire-tamers themselves looked like demons in her child eyes. Indeed, rumor had it that the Slayers had traded their souls for power and their bodies were no more than lifeless puppets for the demons to manipulate. But they were still identifiable through the traditional red garb of the Clan of Vulcanus, complete with the “mempo” or faceplate that covered their faces from the nose down to the chin. Those faceplates were made of both iron and leather with a lacquered finish. They depicted the nose-tendrils and fangs of their sigil dragon, Kai-Ryu the Red Dragon.

It was an open secret that their goal had been The Egg of the Dragon God. It was the most precious of all the relics in the possession of Aki’s clan, handed down to the Yin-Yang Master Belshazzar by the gods of creation themselves and entrusted to the care and protection of the Ciconi Clan. So it had been for two centuries. So it would be until the day of truth.

The Ciconi Clan had carried on a proud and vigilant tradition as keepers and protectors of the Egg. Using both the martial and mystic arts, they kept the raiders at bay. Aki’s late father was the greatest embodiment of their emblem animal, the Stork, wearing his immaculate-white shōzoku suit and leaping into the flames of the enemy like a giant prehistoric bird that was light and airy yet bursting with life, ultimately sacrificing himself and leaving his loved ones behind.

Before Aki realized it, a tear had fallen from the waterline of her eye and blotted the ink on her parchment. Perhaps the calligraphy sensei would understand. She quietly sniffled and wiped the remnant tear away with the long wide sleeve of her white kimono whose knot on the back was as puffed out as a resting stork’s head and shoulder.

It took some effort to lift her bowed head to check the sensei’s reaction but, as soon as she did, she realized something was wrong. The sensei’s typically watchful eyes weren’t trained on her. He was listening to something outside; his head tilted.

“Over there! Over there!” the Imperial Guards were shouting.

“Please remain here, Aki-oujo,” her sensei instructed, putting out all the candles and lamps in the room with a simple wave of his hand.

With surprising agility, he slid open, stepped clear of, and then shut the door, throwing the room into darkness except for the pale sunlight seeping in through the paper windows.      

As the commotion went on outside, Aki floated backwards to camouflage herself amid the banners and shadows of the wall. She tried to regulate her breathing. Through her yoga training, she had learned to reduce her breaths to the point that her heartbeat and metabolism would become very slow and her body would conserve energy. She had resumed sitting seiza-style, half-kneeling half-sitting, this time in the dark and fighting back her curiosity with all the restraint she could muster.

As heir apparent, she wasn’t allowed to put her life in danger. Hundreds of palace guards would also throw themselves on the blades of the enemy before they would let any harm come to her. Aki appreciated the selfless devotion but felt like any normal seventeen-year-old girl would: like a sitting duck.

What was all that about? Something unexpected so rarely happened on the peaceful Ethereal Nest so what could it be? She was burning to find out.

Then, all at once, as an ominous fulfilment of the saying “be careful what you wish for”, she felt the sliding door of the calligraphy room soundlessly open and then just as gently shut. Someone had entered the room and, judging by the air disturbance and minute pressure shifts, it wasn’t her sensei.

Aki let her eyes adjust in the dark. She could make out a shape right beside the entrance. The figure was crouching parallel to the door, only their profile visible to her. Then her heart gave a leap because she could discern the color of the intruder’s shōzoku suit.  It was red!

The realm of the Storks was scattered amid the peaks of the highest mountains in the east, veiled by clouds. On the other hand, red Slayers of the Vulcanus Clan inhabited the very fertile lands at the foot of volcanoes in the west. They enjoyed the hot springs there and tapped the burning energies from deep within the earth to forge terrible weapons of war. Seeing a member of the Vulcanus Clan here now was like seeing a mole on an eagle’s nest.

Aki could hardly bear the suspense. It had been a decade since the last sighting of red Slayers on the Ethereal Nest. Who was this? A thief?

As though the red Slayer could sense her, they turned their head to the shadows that hid Aki. Aki calmed herself again by meditation to become invisible.

Her camouflage appeared to be working, which was a relief. But then she saw the red Slayer raise their hands to make the hand seal of Jin, the Inner Bonds, which would bring their awareness to a heightened state.

The red Slayer put their hands together, fingers interlocked. Then, to Aki’s great consternation, they even whispered the mantra in esoteric Highland tongue: “Through the Infinite, I know the mind of each and all.”

The Slayer’s eyes glinted a fiery yellow in the dark.     

The Kuji Kiri or the Nine Hand Seals was a set of mudras or hand signs. Originally developed by the mountain pilgrim monks of the Ethereal Nest, they were used to purify Slayers under the raging torrent of a waterfall. By forming hand seals, a Slayer was able to summon their ki (energy force) to perform their desired technique. 

The particular hand seal the red Slayer made would give him the power to read the thoughts of others. It was very useful in scanning dark spaces for the presence of other Slayers. But the shocking thing about it was, the thought-listening technique called Chounouryokujutsu was supposed to be unique to the Clan of Stork, the white Slayers. Right now Aki was looking at a member of the Clan of Vulcanus who knew how to execute it.

She could counter the offensive technique with a defensive one of her own, to shield her thoughts from the intruder’s prying mind. But she focused all her energies on staying calm and sitting perfectly still, mainly because the multi-tiered sword stand was far to her left. The swords were all neatly arranged for display like the glaives and the hollow armors, too far out of reach in the face of a determined red Slayer and their throwing stars, flames, or both.