Moonsong and Wolfstep Chapter 3

Chapter 3: In A Pinch, Backtrack Area of Tragic Backstory For Free Loot

A burnt village.

That was the answer to that faint question Hasu had about Momo’s origins in that fallen tree. Surrounded by herbs for warding, hidden from beasts, the baby clearly hadn’t been simply abandoned, so Hasu had set out to investigate the reasoning.

And this was the answer.

A burnt village.

How… cliche. That explained why there had been herbs to guard the child and why the child had been left all alone. Momo had not been abandoned, just a recipient of a mother’s last desperation to save their child no matter the cost, no matter the odds.

Upon waking up, Hasu had tied the cloth into a bundle, thankful for past memories of tying cherry stems with a tongue for the skill to tie cloth with her mouth. Placing the baby inside the makeshift swaddle, Hasu carried Momo in the search for the baby’s origin.

Beginning at the fallen tree where she had found Momo, the wolf had followed a lingering trail to the corpse of a woman. Clothes torn, the body clearly desecrated in life by whatever bandits had caught her, Hasu had struggled to keep her rage contained for the atrocity visited upon what could only be Momo’s mother.

Tempering her anger, allowing it to fuel the shallow grave she had placed the woman in, Hasu had followed the rest of the trail back to the smoldering remains of this village and found the answer.

A burnt village, still smoldering, but long abandoned by the inhabitants and bandits alike.

Stories, no matter the kind, always had three parts; beginning, middle, and end. This would have been the beginning of Momo’s. The middle was no doubt that woman Hasu had found and buried earlier on her way from the log. And the wolf herself was the end of this sordid story of impromptu adoption.

From the log with a baby to the corpse of a mother and now standing at the entrance to the burning remnants of this village, Hasu could see the tragedy playing out in reverse. Of a village being destroyed, a mother fleeing with a child and hiding that child in desperation, running not in an attempt to live but in an attempt to lure and…

Tail hanging low in mourning, the wolf bowed her head in respect to that mother, grieving in place of the baby ignorant of this tragedy as was the strange right of youth.

“You were loved, Momo. If there is one thing you can remember of your village, remember that you were loved,” Hasu whispered to the child hanging from around her neck, nestled in cloth, as they entered the ruins of a village, “Your mother tried to save you. And… Well, I don’t know if this is what they’d consider saved, but I found you and now you’re mine.”

Formerly, a farming village near a stream, there was a quiet pride that could be felt even in the ruins. Nothing large and majestic as the large, sprawling fields of Hasu’s old-life, capable of feeding thousands upon thousands, but the neat and orderly paths of the rice paddies spoke of maintenance and tradition of fathers and sons.

Blackened and burnt as they were, Hasu noted that the buildings had been built with the intent of generations to live under the triangle-shaped thatched roofs. Not that there were any left to live, many of them already collapsed under their own weight, burnt support beams cracking like fractured bones.

Standing at the entrance, Hasu hated how her mouth drooled at the smell of burning human meat. Stomach growling, Hasu stubbornly controlled her beastly instincts and entered the village proper, vaguely hoping to find… something.

As Hasu wandered through the remnants of the village, a dark feeling began pressing down on her deeper. Rage-filled and grief-inducing, it felt as if a hand was trying to squeeze her, scaring her away or dragging her to the earth.

Perhaps it was nothing. Just the imaginations of an easily spooked wolf that wandered into the domain of the recently dead. Then again, Hasu was proof that things were much stranger in this life.

“ ‘It takes a village to raise a child' was a phrase often tossed about in an old life of mine,” Hasu announced to the empty village center, indulging in just a bit of theatrics in an attempt to stave off her fear, “There’s a dark irony saying this to an empty village, and speaking as a former human, this truly is a dark example of our assholery.”

That oppressive feeling didn’t relent, but… seemed to adjust the grip so to speak, seeking less to hold and restrain and destroy and more to… observe.

Bowing her head, Hasu vowed, “To whatever spirits are left here, to that mother who gambled so desperately to save their child’s life, know that I’m going to do my best in raising Momo well.”

A moment passed. When no response was forthcoming, the wolf began entering the various huts and houses, nosing through pots and boxes, and gathering items of interest into one place; food, cloth, anything that she thought would be useful, and a large basket.

Placing everything she had gathered into the basket, Hasu picked it up and continued on her morbid shopping trip through the village with only a mumbled plea.

“So please don’t curse me while I loot the place.”

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Kneeling down, the warrior leaned their spear against their shoulder, clasping two palms together in prayer. Uncaring of the mottled gray soot spottlign the upturned earth, the warrior paid their respects to this ruined village.

There were excuses they could use as to why they had allowed this village to fall. It was not theirs to protect. They were a ronin, a wandering, masterless, honorless warrior.. They were simply too late. They could not have known. So many excuses they could use, but that’s what they were.

Excuses.

Protection of the defenseless was their duty.

Failure and weakness were their greatest sins.

The only honor left to this ronin was to avenge their memory. Ah, that seemed to be all it could do. Avenge things lost.

A final bow, a whispered apology, and murmured vow, the ronin stood up and extended their senses beyond the physical and into the ethereal.

Wearing a red silk scarf to shield their breath from the lingering dust and smoke, a circular straw hat shielded the warrior’s face from the sun as they walked around the village in search of those responsible. The marks on the body spoke of the works of bandits, and most others would have left it at that, but the warrior had been a Practitioner once.

They could sense the fluctuations that bespoke of the land’s energies being taken and consumed for powerful Arts and Techniques. No doubt their leader was a Practitioner, or worse yet, a Cultivator.

A tricky fight would lie ahead in the future, but, even diminished as they were, the warrior had confidence in their skills and plans to deal with a troupe such as this. At least until they saw the tracks of paw prints.

Wolf tracks. Singular wolf, small blessings for that, but large ones. Too large for the type of wolf in this area.

Was this… perhaps not a simple bandit raid? Did they have an experienced Practitioner as their leader? One who rode a wolf? No, worse yet, could the wolf have become a spirit beast, a yokai?

The warrior had thought it was a rookie Practitioner, one who had gotten lucky and found the right catalyst to bring about the Soul and grew drunk on the new power, but if a yokai was in service to them?

What Realm were they at? How powerful were these bandits?

…It was at times like these that the warrior wished they still had the support of the Capital and the authority of the Sun to aid them, but alas, pride had burned those bridges long ago. It wasn’t like anything would have changed.

Skilled as they were, the ronin was no noble, able to call forth a force anywhere they liked. Even if they had been, this was the outskirts, near the spirit wilds. The order of the Capital, corrupt as it was, held no ground here.

Even most nobles would have a hard time coercing the waning Shogun to send sacrificial troops into the outskirts, preferring to hole up and wallow inside their gilded castles and protected walls to grow fat and complain about the lazy commoners and force ‘lesser servants’ to attend to them and--

The ronin cut off that line of thought. They had left that style of sin when they had left the cities. Here and now, there was a bandit troupe to deal with, one that could hopefully be nipped in the bud before they joined the revitalized NIght Parade of 108 Demons.

Adjusting their hat, the warrior shouldered their spear as they followed the wolf tracks. Horrid as it was, they felt immense guilt as they hunted down their target because of how happy they were right now.

For the first time in a long time, it felt as if the ronin was truly doing something to help the common people.