He stood alone, in the mountain pass. The black hat, the robes - the traditional Samurai’s garb passed down to him by the family now gone. With each step, thin silver chains rattled from the brim of his hat, from his wrists, from his sash.
The sun was nearly set when that man - the Beamsplitter - arrived. Just as expected. The samurai stood, blocking the path. Fifteen fulms across. The rickety fence would, perhaps, prevent a child from falling off the side, to the gorge below. Perhaps.
“You are the Beamsplitter.”
The Elezen had the build of an Au Ra. So many of their ilk were the sort of gaunt the Samurai had come to expect. But not this one.
His sister had died in his arms. Body too broken for her to speak. To tell him who had done this. But the woman outside the manor had told him of the culprit: the strange wanderer who carried no weapon.
The Beamsplitter stopped. White robes glistening in the setting sun. A dazzling sight, as if it magnified the warmth of the sun too distant to care.
“We have no quarrel. Stand aside.”
“Forgotten so soon?” The samurai took a step forward. A breeze picked up, his sleeves drifting about him. The robes felt strange, about him. As if they were never truly his. And yet they had been made for him. His fingers twitched. “My family are dead by your hands, warrior.”
“I have killed no family. I have destroyed bandits. I have slain beasts. I have crushed the craven and the cowardly, broken the boorish and the battle-starved. I say again. Stand aside. We have no quarrel. Whoever you think I am, I am not.”
The Beamsplitter pulled back his sleeves. Golden braces about his forearms, fixed with thick locks. A flick of his fingers and the locks opened. The braces fell to the ground.
“Such guilt you place upon a wanderer, Samurai. But it is ever the nature of your kind to judge at a glance. To ‘trust your instincts.’“ His eyes pierced like daggers. “Instincts are weakness. You should know this. You should be well aware, warrior, what your training instills. It breaks your instinct to raise your arms. To cower. To flinch. Justice is not an instinct. You speak of your passions.”
“You will not sway me with your forked tongue.”
“So be it. Stand aside or strike first, I care not which.”
A flash of pink light. Whirling cherry blossoms in the wake of the samurai and his blade. They dissipated once more into the land whence they came - conjurations, nothing more.
But the Beamsplitter was gone. As were the bracers.
He turned, looking about. “I did not take you for a coward. Come, hide no more. Face me, murderer!”
But the Beamsplitter was gone.
He was not one to make record, usually. And yet his own actions had so surprised him that, as he camped in the woods, in the light of the fire he’d made from broken branches and twigs, he could not help himself. He turned the reality over and over in his head. Considering. Digesting.
He meditated on the situation until morning. When the sun rose, he tore the bark from the tree he had broken apart for his fire. He channeled aether into his fingers, clawing out the message across the fallen log.
On this day, Yan Shen chose peace. A man lives on.
There was nothing else to be done for it. If he ever met that woman again, he would tell her. Some part of him - something buried in his soul - was disgusted. What value was there in her outlook? What strength did he gain from avoiding a fight?
And yet, over and over, the question echoed through his mind. The question he did not like the answer to, for he ought have asked it many times before:
What strength is gained from a victory bereft of challenge?
