Motochika Chōsokabe (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seadevil) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
piratejournal2014-08-18 12:23 am
seadevil) wrote in piratejournal2014-08-18 12:23 am
Entry tags:
[Voice]
Kodachi asked me for this particular tale and I'm of a mind to tell it this evening.
They oft say that Mount Osore marks the gates of Hell and to look at the place, you can believe it. To make your way to the summit is to climb through a desolate landscape of charred rock and thick, sulfurous air. Not a living soul can be found on its slopes, too fearful are they of what they could invite upon themselves. It's a colorless, lifeless, soulless place. Were it not for the color of the pinwheels the fearful leave as offerings and the cloths tied to the Jizo statues that dot its surface, one would truly think he'd found himself beyond the world of the living.
What then, you ask, was I doing there? What, indeed.
I was sailing north with the intent of making a visit to the One Eyed Dragon, as I do occasionally when prospects in warmer waters aren't quite as promising. The man carries six swords, after all. I can usually make off with one or two of them if I can trounce him soundly enough in a fight, more if we've been drinking, But that aside, I was in search of treasure as usual and heard tell that Harumasa Nanbu had taken up residence on the top of the mountain named for fear itself.
Once I had it in my head to give Old Man Nanbu a visit, I made my way up the mountain. I'm not a man who falls prey to fear easily, if at all, so the dead silence didn't deter me. With only the whistling wind as a companion, I climbed up the rocky path towards the temple grounds he'd taken up residence in. I have a friendly knock, but he didn't seem the friendly sort. Some arcane power kept the gates closed tightly, tied no doubt to a few outposts that circled the main grounds. I wasn't about to let my trip go to waste, so it was time to lay waste to his defenses. Not that anything is ever quite as simple as I plan for it to be.
Usually when I pay a visit to someone, I'm met with their army. To have no welcoming committee was a bit disappointing at first, but I soon came to regret thinking so. As I approached the first outpost, I was overcome with the sickly smell of incense. The plain surrounding the fortification was unmanned, leaving me standing alone in front of several large incense burners that released noxious fumes so thick that the air itself took on their color. Were I a wiser man, I would have taken one and been done with the expedition, but I chose to examine them instead. They were very old, their sheen long since lost to tarnish and their workmanship crude, even arcane in a way. As I looked at them, I heard a strange sound that chilled me to my very bones.
There was a dragging. Soft at first, then louder as whatever was being pulled against the rocks grew in number. Then as it drew closer, there was rattling, metal against rock, metal against metal. Then, as I slowly turned, moaning. Pitiful, forlorn, bleak, like it was being pulled from the depths of hell itself.
And perhaps it was, for I was surrounded by an army of the dead.
The corpses of battles past that were strewn about the fort had drawn themselves to their feet, given life by the incense. Their empty eyes fixed on me and they shambled forward, intent on me joining their number. I fought them valiantly, cutting them down one after one with my anchor, only to watch them rise again and again, undaunted by my attack. It was then that I realized that only by breaking the incense burners could I free their poor benighted souls from their endless torment. I held them off, though oft I felt their cold, scrabbling hands at my neck when I turned away to break down the vessals and though I conquered the position, I questioned the wisdom of continuing on.
However, I'm not a man to leave things half done.
I traveled on, knowing there were two more towers that needed to be brought under my control before I could open the doors that were keeping me from my prize. The second held more of the same, but as I traveled on to the third, I realized that things were not to remain so easy. On the narrow, rocky path to the outpost, I came across one of Old Man Nanbu's generals, or so I thought. I hailed him, but there was no response save a vicious attack. As I close the space between us, swinging my anchor at his head, I saw that there was no man's face inside the helmet, only two burning yellow eyes that held no humanity. When I struck him down, I could see his soul itself rise from the black, rusted pile that was his armor. It hovered above him, blue and black, wispy and cold, shining with an inner light that was no light at all. And then it sank back into the armor.
And he stood again.
How does one kill the dead?
It was all I could do to draw him onward to the final outpost, but when I reached the fortification, I found it manned by more like him, hulking, shambling, and evil with those burning eyes staring out at me. Their swords cut into me as I broke through the incense burners and I feared that I would find my own death at the gates of Hell itself, but the great Sea Devil of the West is not a man so easy to kill as that. I took the third tower an dragged myself onward to face Nanbu himself.
Now, I'd never fought a necromancer before and certainly that wasn't what I'd planned to do that day. However, one never knows what opponent one shall face and I found myself facing down that mad-eyed old man in the small temple square. He had no answers for my questions, my taunts, my threats. His raspy voice babbled, prattled, chattered in mad poetry meant only for the dead. He called down incantations and spells, raising more of his accursed monstrosities to impede me. It was only when I cut him down that they fell around me, finally sent back to Hell where they belonged. I thought, then, that perhaps I should take no treasure back with me, for who knows what I might have invited upon myself.
I'm not a man who fears much, but I still see that place in my nightmares.
They oft say that Mount Osore marks the gates of Hell and to look at the place, you can believe it. To make your way to the summit is to climb through a desolate landscape of charred rock and thick, sulfurous air. Not a living soul can be found on its slopes, too fearful are they of what they could invite upon themselves. It's a colorless, lifeless, soulless place. Were it not for the color of the pinwheels the fearful leave as offerings and the cloths tied to the Jizo statues that dot its surface, one would truly think he'd found himself beyond the world of the living.
What then, you ask, was I doing there? What, indeed.
I was sailing north with the intent of making a visit to the One Eyed Dragon, as I do occasionally when prospects in warmer waters aren't quite as promising. The man carries six swords, after all. I can usually make off with one or two of them if I can trounce him soundly enough in a fight, more if we've been drinking, But that aside, I was in search of treasure as usual and heard tell that Harumasa Nanbu had taken up residence on the top of the mountain named for fear itself.
Once I had it in my head to give Old Man Nanbu a visit, I made my way up the mountain. I'm not a man who falls prey to fear easily, if at all, so the dead silence didn't deter me. With only the whistling wind as a companion, I climbed up the rocky path towards the temple grounds he'd taken up residence in. I have a friendly knock, but he didn't seem the friendly sort. Some arcane power kept the gates closed tightly, tied no doubt to a few outposts that circled the main grounds. I wasn't about to let my trip go to waste, so it was time to lay waste to his defenses. Not that anything is ever quite as simple as I plan for it to be.
Usually when I pay a visit to someone, I'm met with their army. To have no welcoming committee was a bit disappointing at first, but I soon came to regret thinking so. As I approached the first outpost, I was overcome with the sickly smell of incense. The plain surrounding the fortification was unmanned, leaving me standing alone in front of several large incense burners that released noxious fumes so thick that the air itself took on their color. Were I a wiser man, I would have taken one and been done with the expedition, but I chose to examine them instead. They were very old, their sheen long since lost to tarnish and their workmanship crude, even arcane in a way. As I looked at them, I heard a strange sound that chilled me to my very bones.
There was a dragging. Soft at first, then louder as whatever was being pulled against the rocks grew in number. Then as it drew closer, there was rattling, metal against rock, metal against metal. Then, as I slowly turned, moaning. Pitiful, forlorn, bleak, like it was being pulled from the depths of hell itself.
And perhaps it was, for I was surrounded by an army of the dead.
The corpses of battles past that were strewn about the fort had drawn themselves to their feet, given life by the incense. Their empty eyes fixed on me and they shambled forward, intent on me joining their number. I fought them valiantly, cutting them down one after one with my anchor, only to watch them rise again and again, undaunted by my attack. It was then that I realized that only by breaking the incense burners could I free their poor benighted souls from their endless torment. I held them off, though oft I felt their cold, scrabbling hands at my neck when I turned away to break down the vessals and though I conquered the position, I questioned the wisdom of continuing on.
However, I'm not a man to leave things half done.
I traveled on, knowing there were two more towers that needed to be brought under my control before I could open the doors that were keeping me from my prize. The second held more of the same, but as I traveled on to the third, I realized that things were not to remain so easy. On the narrow, rocky path to the outpost, I came across one of Old Man Nanbu's generals, or so I thought. I hailed him, but there was no response save a vicious attack. As I close the space between us, swinging my anchor at his head, I saw that there was no man's face inside the helmet, only two burning yellow eyes that held no humanity. When I struck him down, I could see his soul itself rise from the black, rusted pile that was his armor. It hovered above him, blue and black, wispy and cold, shining with an inner light that was no light at all. And then it sank back into the armor.
And he stood again.
How does one kill the dead?
It was all I could do to draw him onward to the final outpost, but when I reached the fortification, I found it manned by more like him, hulking, shambling, and evil with those burning eyes staring out at me. Their swords cut into me as I broke through the incense burners and I feared that I would find my own death at the gates of Hell itself, but the great Sea Devil of the West is not a man so easy to kill as that. I took the third tower an dragged myself onward to face Nanbu himself.
Now, I'd never fought a necromancer before and certainly that wasn't what I'd planned to do that day. However, one never knows what opponent one shall face and I found myself facing down that mad-eyed old man in the small temple square. He had no answers for my questions, my taunts, my threats. His raspy voice babbled, prattled, chattered in mad poetry meant only for the dead. He called down incantations and spells, raising more of his accursed monstrosities to impede me. It was only when I cut him down that they fell around me, finally sent back to Hell where they belonged. I thought, then, that perhaps I should take no treasure back with me, for who knows what I might have invited upon myself.
I'm not a man who fears much, but I still see that place in my nightmares.
[voice]
[And he leans a bit closer to the journal and tries to mimic the whispering voice Kodachi used.]
Am I pretty?
[voice]
... That would be the sound of Ragna shutting his journal so that he doesn't have to listen to the rest of the creepy story. It's bad enough he's heard as much as he did, and he'll probably spend the next few hours trying to convince himself none of it is real.]