Scott McGough - Outlaw:Champions of Kamigawa

Hidetsugu continued to chant. Then, the ogre shaman stood with his eyes closed and hands open. He brought his massive palms together with the sound of a black powder keg explosion, and every flame in the cavern went out.

Toshi stood perfectly still in the sudden darkness, sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He could hear Kobo shuffling, moving things across the floor, but he could not hear Hidetsugu.

"Now we're done," the ogre said. His voice came from behind Toshi, and the ochimusha jumped. "Get ready to leave." Then, Hidetsugu chuckled. "Kobo."

A torch burst into fiery life with the burly apprentice below. Kobo was no longer in his red and black robes, but instead had donned a simple woolen wrap that covered him from his waist to his knees. He wore spiked wire wrapped around both wrists, and Toshi saw that he had a set of metal rings embedded in his torso. A strand of animal hide stretched from the ring on one collarbone down to the one on his ribs, then back up to the other collarbone. The rough strips of hide rubbed against the raw, weeping brand on Kobo's chest.

"Let me guess," Toshi said. "You're dressed like one of the forest monks."

Kobo nodded. It occurred to Toshi that he hadn't heard the burly youth say very much since he'd arrived.

"So," he said, "that Consuming Oni back there… can you summon that? Because things may get rough out there, and I want to know what you're capable of."

The ogre's apprentice held Toshi's eyes but he seemed somewhat embarrassed.

"No," he said. "I am nowhere near that powerful."

"Yet," added Hidetsugu.

"Good," said Toshi. "I don't want that thing anywhere near me unless Hidetsugu is there with his club and a suitable decoy. Keep things simple and we'll get along just fine."

Kobo looked to his mentor, who nodded. He echoed the nod to Toshi and said, "As you say, oath-brother."

"And don't call me that." He gestured between Hidetsugu and himself. "When we do it, it's kind of endearing, like a playful insult between friends. When you say it, it sounds far too ominous."

"But he is your oath-brother, Toshi. I will hold you to that."

"You don't have to hold me to anything. I'm bound. I will honor the oath."

Hidetsugu brushed past Toshi and crouched down to his apprentice. "Go now. Seek as I have instructed. Follow Toshi's example-he's an expert at staying alive."

"I will not fail you, master."

Hidetsugu jerked his head toward the incline. Outside, the morning sky was just starting to exchange darkness for dawn.

Without another word, Kobo turned and started up the incline. Toshi watched him go, then turned back to Hidetsugu.

"You think this will work?"

The ogre busied himself with the embers slowly dying in the brazier. "We'll all die eventually. The trick is to die well, with your eyes open."

Toshi shook his head. "You barely make sense to me any more, old man. In a few more years, you're going to need a second apprentice to wipe the drool away from your senile lips."

Hidetsugu strode away from Toshi, disappearing into the gloom in just a few huge strides.

"Find out what threatens you, Toshi." The ogre's voice echoed from every wall, and Toshi strained to spot him. "For it threatens us all."

Despite his best efforts, Toshi did gaze around as he exited Hidetsugu's cavern. He was not eager to spy more portents that might give him an omen for what was to come. But he was a kanji adept, and he could not help but look.

To his relief and his indefinable dread, he saw nothing but Kobo as the apprentice stood waiting outside the ogre's hut. Silently, they made their way north, leaving the shadows behind as the sun rose over the ridge behind them.

Pearl-Ear stood looking out a window from the mezzanine of the Daimyo's stronghold. With a short turn of her head, she could change her view from the rich, crowded splendor within the tower and the blasted devastation without.

Towabara had changed dramatically in the twenty years since she went up into the tower to announce the princess's birth. Then, the view from this height would have shown a horizon dotted with villages and towns, with good clear roads and vast, unbroken fields.

Now, from her window, the fox-woman could still see nearly all western Towabara, from the fortifications at the base of the tower past the skeletal villages and towns, all the way across the smoke- and mist-blanketed wasteland to the vague horizon. Campfires burned below, and sentry patrols carried lanterns out in the haze, tiny pinpricks of light struggling against a field of dismal gray.

Once, the stronghold had been the center of Konda's vast holdings, the keystone of his kingdom. Now, the tower and its immediate grounds contained virtually all Konda's domain. His lands had been devastated by the Kami War, his people dead, driven off, or crowded behind its walls like rabbits in a warren.

Daimyo Konda's stronghold still soared hundreds of stories over the rest of his domain. Where it had once crowned a gleaming and vibrant society, now it was one of the few large structures still standing. The tower was begun as the young lord's first great act as sovereign, and it had served as both fortress and palace once the outer defensive walls were complete. From this powerful seat, Konda drove the bandits out of the Araba, consolidated a dozen different local warlords under his banner, and established his nation as the greatest power in Kamigawa.

The tower's foundation was carved into the very roots of the rocky mountain. It was called a tower because it stretched up so high, but it was broader even at its midpoint than any other castle in the kingdom. It had taken a great deal of powerful magic, thirty thousand laborers, and over a decade to complete. By the time the final spire was set in place, Towabara was a nation that deserved such a grand capitol and Konda had earned his right to rule it.

Pearl-Ear looked down at the rolling clouds of dust that roamed the ruins like a predator, then up to the sun, muted and faint behind an endless ceiling of yellow clouds. Twenty years of war had bled the entire land white, draping it in despair and pallid, sickly hues.

Far below, her sharp ears caught the sound of soldiers shouting. She peered through the haze and saw a company of warriors converging, moving, circling around an indiscriminate mass. The kami had come again, as they always did. Konda's retainers and soldiers had gone out to beat them back, as they always did.

Inside the building, a loud brass gong sounded, calling all Konda's top advisors to their weekly assembly. Despite the trouble inside the gates, Konda was determined to conduct affairs of state normally.

Pearl-Ear dreaded this meeting more each passing week. The bickering between diplomats was almost as painful as the tales of akki unrest and bandit raids that poured in from around the kingdom. If she were free to do as she pleased, she would have returned to her people in the forest years ago.

Lady Pearl-Ear gathered her robes and padded down the mezzanine stairs, to the great hall where the assembly took place. She was not free. She was bound by duty to her people, her position, and her beloved friends. Her greatest joy in Eiganjo was also her greatest burden-how she wished she could simply pack up the things that mattered most and go. To the forest, to the countryside, even to Numai. Anywhere but here, in the cursed kingdom of Daimyo Konda.

As Lady Pearl-Ear reached the final step, a pair of human girls approached her. The smaller of the two was dressed in a floor-length blue robe with wide white sleeves, the traditional uniform of the Minamo

Academy. The student wizard had short, straight brown hair that framed her face and accented her wide brown eyes. She was lean and ropy, with arm muscles that rippled like a soldier's. Pearl-Ear could sense an aura of varnished wood and bowstrings on her. The Minamo trained its students as kyujutsu archers as well as mages, and that this one, Riko-ome, was at the top of her class in both. The student archer's face and figure were both quite feminine, but compared to the young woman next to her, Pearl-Ear thought Riko seemed rather plain and boyish.