"You are...the Sword Who Cuts the Heavens." ✦ This is a fan-blog dedicated to the Hosted Game Samurai Of Hyuga and the fandom. We reblog, keep you updated, and try to create content for everyone. Please enjoy your stay and try not to destroy any of the property. Thank you! °✦⁎❈― 浪人―❈⁎✦°
Aya’s hands are chapped from the cold. Calloused. Scarred from a lifetime on the road. Night after night, in a sleepy voice, Satsuma asks her to tell him where and when the marks on her hands came from. Aya obliges. She thumbs the leathery texture of her hands from handling red-hot iron rods for training. She points to a white stripe crisscrossing the lifeline on her palm from a bandit’s knife. She touches a rounded blemish surrounding her thumb: punishment from a stray dog when she was young and dumb enough to try to steal its scraps. He always kisses them: the scars, their stories, the woman who starred in them.
Satsuma’s hands are softer but still a bit rough. Despite rubbing oil into his palms and skin nightly to keep them soft and smooth, more and more callouses are appearing. There are bumps and nicks on his fingers from handling splinters or accidentally cutting himself with the knife during long, contemplative hours of woodcarving. His hands are slowly transitioning from the softness of nobility to the coarseness of commoner life. But Aya doesn’t seem to mind. She always holds his hand or plays with his fingers or shivers when he traces her neck with the lightest of caresses, as gentle and as quickly gone as a snowflake melting on the tip of a tongue.
Hands that have brought death. Hands that have blessed a nation. Hands that have clutched at dirty rags and other orphans. Hands that have run over the finest of silks and clasped together in prayer to the Lion God. Together these hands are conjoined as Aya and Satsuma watch another sunset together.
They share no words, only silence. In front of them, village life continues. Children run around playing with their toys or chasing each other. Mothers scold them while fanning the hearth flames or balancing the laundry basket on their hip. Fathers wipe the sweat off their brows as they finish working in the fields for the day. This life was totally different from anything Satsuma and Aya had experienced before but they wouldn’t trade it for anything else. For a chance to settle down, unknown and unbothered, and revel in small comforts like this: watching the slow descent of the sun through the sky, leaving behind trails of pinks and reds and oranges in its wake while the married couple held hands.
Aya turns to Satsuma with a brilliant smile that he returns. She squeezes his hand. It says everything: the words in Aya’s mind as she watches Satsuma carve more toys for the village children, the words in Satsuma’s heart whenever he heard the villagers laugh at another one of Aya’s jokes.
The bokken slashed through the air, a rhythmic series of downwards cuts and strokes. The boy panted hard but the set was almost finished. At the thirtieth swing, he returned the practice weapon to his side as he was taught, his sword arm relaxed but ready to move in a flash should trouble attack him unexpectedly.
Loud clapping rang through the air, coming from behind him. Startled, the boy nearly jumped a meter into the air and dropped his bokken. He whirled around quickly to face his foe, but then immediately dropped into a clumsy bow in front of his sensei, Kenji.
Kenji grinned at Ige. “Nice job, Ige. The swings are looking better. Your moves are—pun intended—a lot sharper.”
Ige quickly straightened himself, only to bow again a few more times. “A-arigatou, s-sen-sensei! I did like you said! I kept a sturdy stance and grip on my sword to improve the force of my swing!”
“Haha, that you did, that you did. Looking great!” Kenji clapped his trainee on the back. The boy nearly stumbled under the praise but managed to stay on his feet.
“Do you think… that I’ll be ready for the tournament?” Ige said in a smaller voice.
Kenji’s grin turned serious. He looked down at this boy, this young life, this innocent who was thrust in a battle he did not choose. How many bodies would lie in the dust for Ige to see? How many screams of torture and agony would Ige have to hear? Kenji felt the old anger begin to bubble up inside of him. All this for the whims of power-hungry samurai who swore to “protect” their people by offering them up as a sacrifice in a sick and twisted tournament? Fuck them.
“Ige-kun.” The boy stared back at him, wide eyes full of innocence and trust. And Kenji swore to keep that innocence in his eyes just a little while longer, before it had to be exposed to the taint and poison of war. Even though he knew he was the lowest of the low, a dirty ronin, he swore to be worthy of the faith Ige and the other Tanimura students placed in him.
“We’ll be ready. And together in the tournament. No matter the practice, no matter how strong our foes, as long as we work as a team and believe in each other, we’ll be stronger than anything else and prevail.” Kenji returned to his grin and offered a fist bump to Ige.
“Y-yes sir! I’ll be strong enough to protect everyone!” Ige cheered and smiled brightly.
“And that means,” Ige’s smile stretched further, more than was humanely possible, wide enough to show all of his bared teeth, “I’ll be strong enough to kill you, sensei.”
Kenji stared down in shock, only to notice that Ige’s bokken—no, Sadao’s katana , was now plunged into his stomach. As soon as he noticed the blade, immense pain started spiraling from his gut.
Kenji felt at a loss for air, could only choke and gasp inaudibly as Ige stepped in closer. The boy shoved in the sword further and twisted it, causing Kenji to gape silently in torment. Kenji looked back into Ige’s eyes, which had grown dark enough to rival even the purest obsidian.
“After all, you were strong enough to let me die, weren’t you?”
Kenji snapped awake with a hoarse yell. It was the only sound that echoed in the small, dilapidated hut he was in. Fragile light spilled down from the holes in the straw roof, illuminating spots in the dirty floor covered in ash, debris, dried blood spots, and Kami knew what else. Kenji leaned back against the walls of the hut and he shuddered in the chill of winter air, trying to draw a tattered, bloodstained blue haori around him further. He gave up on trying to conserve warmth and put his face in his hands, trembling and gasping lightly as he tried to calm his pounding heart. As the remnants of his nightmare ran through his mind, he began to claw at his temple and bit his lip as hard as he could, enough to feel the blood welling around his teeth and trickle down his chin.
“I’m sorry,” he moaned in a low voice. I’m sorry, Ige-kun . And he began to recite the other names that habit slowly poured into his mind. Hinata. Kaze. Suzuki. Haru. Sanosuke. Yoshi. Fuuga. So many others, so many of his men and brothers-in-arms. It seemed that Ige would be another face on his list of sins, the list of people that depended on him and died for it. All because he was too slow, too stupid, too WEAK—
“Bad dreams again?” Akane’s quiet voice from off to the side interrupted his torrential stream of thought.
Kenji breathed out slowly in relief. Made himself relax bit by bit before turning to reply to her with a tired smile.
But there was no one there. No Akane to talk to, no jade green eyes to meet his and stare in silent understanding over the aftermath of nightmares. No Masashi and Masami to tease together, no Toshio to argue with, no Hatch to drink with, no Momoko look after him worriedly. No Daisuke, Borgia, Nishi, or Kohaku to banter and train with, and certainly no presence of another human being to take comfort in. Because he chose to leave them all when he ran out of the tournament grounds: after Ige had died and he killed General Shantao and revealed who he truly was .
He ran to save them. Had to, really. To keep them away from a wreck and failure of a swordsman.
The sun still shone, the wind still breezed by gently. The distant animals rustled in the snow-covered underbrush outside. The world kept going and didn’t stop for tragedy, unaware of the one man that did. And Kenji released scream after scream of rage, again and again into the empty air of the empty hut until his throat was hoarse, until the blood pounding in his ears stopped, until he was too exhausted to continue. Until his mind was silent again.
Do you know how does Book 3 describe the Firefly spirit armor?
Here ya go anon:
“Firefly: a kimono that looked plain black and delightfully low-key. I had feared it would be something more flashy, and rightfully so. My haori jacket was silk, and more than that, it was semi-translucent, and its gold patterns gave off a remarkable shine. The simple kimono was, in truth, carefully embroidered with a dozen designs revealed at my every step.”
-Mod Jun
“The silhouette of a demon—no, something worse than a demon—stood before Teru with blood-spattered armor, with golden eyes blazing in the light of the fearsome torch held in hand. The torch roared, ferocious and red, and the man on the ground tried to transform, to run…”
Hundreds of years after the legend of the White Wolf, a man in the land of the rising sun walks the demon-strewn Path.
A new contract has started! Read the latest chapter here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813480/chapters/50699636
I know it’s spooky season but my dumb ass is obsessed with samurai of hyuga, so I whipped up a short animatic in 2 days because I have no self control and I also need more Basho content in my life
“The shōki’s mutated ears heard the sound of it first—the horrible cracking sound of bones breaking and twisting into a new shape as the demon grew in size, his body turning into a hulking black mass that tore apart his clothing; His long hair shortened and black fur rippled across his ivory skin…”
Hundreds of years after the legend of the White Wolf, a man in the land of the rising sun walks the demon-strewn Path.
Abomination, freak, relic of the past—these are the shōki’s titles in the violently evolving country of Hyuga. As he hunts for monsters with which to bloody his twin swords, will he discover his place in the modernizing world? Or will he, much like his prey, die out in the face of human civilization?
This is a series of short stories based on The Witcher, Samurai of Hyuga, and Japanese Folklore and History.
The last chapter for the first contract is out! Read it below:
