(Ejio) Awakening at the Shadow-Grotto

Weeks had passed since the aggression beneath the Chisei District, the violence of the Kenka Murab (Fight Club) where Ejio had last seen Simple. Ejio remembered with burning clarity the lightning-fast movement of Simple's hand shutting the hidden door, sealing off the passageway down which Kinotu had taken them all.

The door shut and all sound was cut off, but in his dreams Ejio could hear the furious strikes of steel as Simple fought the soldiers of the Imperial Legions in those tunnels. The Crane artisan could imagine the quiet resolve on Simple's face as he was ripped apart by Akodo Matoko and her servants.

Ejio shook his head to clear away the thought. This was neither the time nor the place for such dark meanderings. The Doji sat on a cushioned stool amid the remarkable Shadow-Grotto. Aptly named, for Ejio could sit and watch the interplay of light and shadow dance along the leaves for hours on end and never touch chisel to stone.

He was meant to be shaping a great work, pulling from the grotto its quintessence, the very stuff from which it was made.

But he could not shake the feeling that something was not right.

Ejio set aside the tools and shifted, back to the garden, eyes on a sizable mound of grey clay. He began to pour water on the material to soften it, mind adrift, unfocused. He would allow his spirit to draw forth what it will.

The Crane closed his eyes and felt the clay take shape. Behind him, from the shadows of the grotto, a soft voice whispered as it had before.

There are dangers in playing with old power. Danger in the shadow of the unknown.

Ejio's fingers melded with the clay. He felt sweat drip from his brow. His eyes opened for the briefest of seconds and he saw by the shadows that he had been working, not for mere seconds, but over an hour.

He closed his eyes once more.

Each shadow tells a story from when the light touched upon it. What story do you wish to tell? What do you seek? What do you seek? What do you sssseeeeeeeeeek...

Ejio faltered, fingers digging deep, shaping the clay. He felt a presence all about him, trying to draw from him.

It dawned upon him that he must be dreaming.

He shaped the clay with fury. Suddenly, an absent-minded exercise in meditation had turned into a give-and-take between him and the art. He tried to draw forth from the clay what hidden visage lay inside. The shadow reached out in kind and instead tried to pull from Ejio, from his soul, the hidden depths of his soul.

He knew he must not fail.


OOC:
Respond as you like, but each time you post we will be making a roll as well.

At any point you may opt to concede, giving up entirely, letting the art fall away and turn to mush instead of taking form.

The power that lies within the Shadow-Grotto is warring with you. As you try to pull from it, it tries to take from you.

Each post will see you make a roll along the following guidelines:

Artisan: Sculpture / Willpower (in lieu of Awareness)

The TN starts at 15 and will get progressively harder.

You may benefit from all of your normal Artisan benefits. You may make raises.

You will either succeed in making enough raises to finish the art and draw out of the clay what you desire. Or, the TN will get high enough that you will fail, not having achieved the required total raises, and from you the Shadow-Grotto will take something...precious.

Let's begin!

Ejio's hands moved, twisting the clay even as his eyes remained unfocused, mind succumbing to the moment. He knew that he risked something deeper than ever in this endeavor and maybe those who used his eyes would help to keep him whole. He sometimes felt like he had glimpses of their lives, their personalities but never more than feelings. Right now, they were his guiding point as his spirit tangled with forces more powerful than mere words and ideas.

(5 raises - 1 free; TN 35; Roll 50)

Ejio's mind flashed black and white, light and shadow, as if he were blinking rapidly. His fingers shaped the clay, threw aside huge chunks of the material, and tore out a rough shape from the darkness.

For some reason he imagined the wandering bard again. Ikoma Redosha flashed to mind and he could see the man clearly, into his soul, into his mind.

An oppressive voice crashed down into the back of Ejio's mind and he felt the breath expel from his lungs.

What do you seek? Take it. Reach into the darkness and shape it. Give us something of yourself. What do you ssssseeeeeeek?

Ejio's fingers continued to work furiously. The voice was dominating. It was hard to concentrate. Yet, from elsewhere in the grotto, a second voice could be heard.

He could not yet make out what it said.

He knew now that he was most certainly not dreaming.


OOC:
Base TN is now 25. Proceed as you like.

Ejio listened harder, trying to focus but knowing that drawing from his senses was not his strong point. Instead, he focused on the difference in feeling that the second voice brought. He could feel power in the first voice. He felt a willingness to share power. But he sensed sacrifice. He had already sacrificed a part of himself to advance his goals but was this also necessary? Perhaps not.

(Roll failed)

Thoughts came fast now. A flood of images, of emotions, jostled and shoved to make themselves most known.

Ejio remembered an old peasant woman in his home province who would go about collecting scrap wood and materials from the Kakita Artisan Academy to sell to the lesser artisans. She worked diligently and one day Ejio saw her with her four children, so far below his own station. He wondered now where she was and in that brief instant of thought, he saw her, cold and alone, on her deathbed, children gone away. Life passed her by and the Doji could not help but feel that it was somehow his fault.

In the here and now Ejio heard the twin voices. Each sought to be heard over the other, to be dominant. The first, the oppressive power, tugged at haunted memory and sent Ejio down a spiral of depression. The second, the softer, more distant voice, tried in vain to speak up, to call out.

Yet, as it grew louder, the first voice simply matched it in tone and tenor. It was nearly impossible to tell them apart, but Ejio knew it was crucial for him to do so.

He glanced down at his hands, still working furiously.

The clay began to take a familiar shape and in his mind’s eye, Doji Ejio could see a simple ronin taking form.


OOC:
- You may make Investigation/Awareness TN 30 to try to differentiate between the two voices. You may make Raises, 1 for each voice, to gain further clarity about their individual nature.

- You may continue making the Artisan/Willpower Roll.

(Two raises on Investigation/Awareness; Void spent to get skill)
TN 40 - Roll 64 http://orokos.com/roll/336068

(4 raises on Sculpture/Willpower)
TN 40 - Roll 53 http://orokos.com/roll/336069

Sweat poured down the artisan's back in great streaming rivulets and soaked him through. Ejio did not care, could not care. His hands worked furiously into the flesh of the clay. Fingers ripped away useless chunks and threw them with great violence to the ground below. Thumbs shaped and maneuvered the face, the body, the arms and legs and sword and his fingernails sliced the tiniest of details into the work.

Two voices spoke as one, but now he could tell them apart.

I am Keikoku, spirit of the grove. I am as old as time, older than the Empire, grown here from the stalks of the first seeds of the universe itself. Your work is more remarkable than imagined.

The first voice was soft and soothing, calm and low.

The second was harsher, faster, more aggressive.

I am Keikoku, spirit of the grove. I am as old as time, older than the Empire, grown here from the stalks of the first seeds of the universe itself. Your work is deadly and you draw forth what you do not know.

Ejio created in a blind, zealous fury and knew now what he was doing. The statue formed into a tiny replica of his erstwhile bodyguard, the ronin known as Simple.

Ejio remembered again the slam of the hidden door and the darkness. He wondered if Simple had survived.

He knew now that it was more complicated than that.

The first and soothing voice spoke up once more.

You reach into the clay and you pull forth the truth of the world. You give it yourself and you pull from it the detail to recreate your lost friend. Shape it. Create it. Give it life!

The second voice grew sharper, shrill in Ejio's ears. It pained him to listen.

You reach into the clay and you pull forth the truth of the world. You give it yourself and you pull from it the detail to recreate your lost friend. It takes from you. Continue and you may lose a piece of your soul!

The two voices spoke as one and it was difficult to tell them apart. But Ejio realized one, clear detail.

They did not understand that they were two. They could not hear one another. They spoke as if each was the only one.

Shape it! Work the clay! Bring him forth!

Give up this folly! You damn your soul!

An image began to take shape in the artisan's mind, clear and visceral. The vague shadowy outline of Simple knelt on the ground before him in place of the clay. Ejio's fingers were intertwined in his hair as if he were a shugenja blessing a supplicant.

The man looked up and two images, side-by-side, blurred into one.

In the first, Simple was clearly empty. His eyes were a window in a body that was nothing more than a husk, an empty shell.

In the second, his eyes flared to life, but they reflected Ejio's own eyes. Eyes that had greatly diminished. Eyes that had lost...something vital.

In both eyes Ejio saw the pleading look from Simple. But did that look plead for him to continue, to draw him forth?

Or was that pleading look begging for him to stop?

OOC:

Investigation/Awareness
Clarified results detailed above.

Sculpture/Willpower
I see 9 total raises on this roll so far. Please continue. The Base TN is now 35.

As a final note, Ejio realizes at this point that there is a price to be paid no matter how he proceeds. He may give up, freely and without injury to himself, but in doing so he is all but certain he will never see Simple again.

He may continue, but if he does there is a choice he must make. A conscious choice that will seem unconscious as he does it. Will he try to bring Simple back by allowing whatever the darkness consumes him to grow stronger? Or will Ejio instead take that darkness into himself?

Your choice(s).

The Artisan sighed deeply, loss and sorrow tearing at him as he looked upon the form his hands had wrought. Somehow he knew that his lover's servant and his bodyguard was lost but not irretrievably. The cost, however, would be high. Would it be too high? He reflected back on the life Simple had led since their meeting and tried to remember any moments of joy. Any moments of genuine pleasure or even of longing. There was obedience and an immense usefulness but was there anything else?

He reached gingerly for the small form, fingertips tracing the intricate work. He was initially careful to keep from smearing the lines or the form but the voices intervened. They demanded of him. He did not know who they were despite his best actions but he would not be their pawn in his own destruction. With the same violence that had formed the lost ronin, Ejio grabbed the clay and dug deeply, pulling to the sides and destroying figure. He would not doom the man to the continued dark existence and he would not accept such a life for himself.

Sitting down, he let himself mourn his "friend," resolute in his decision even as he questioned it with his whisper.

"You will not have me."

The world calmed and in the space of a breath, in the moments between thought, Ejio thought he could feel a soft sigh of release.

A soul had departed this world, bound no longer by dark purpose.

The two voices vanished, but not before one of them, the voice of clarity and warning, spoke one final time.

You are worthy of finishing this creation. Shed light on the grotto. Turn away the shadow.

The moment was one of closure, of salvation, of validation for his larger act. The spirit - he knew her name now as Keikoku - wanted him to continue his work.

A shadow fell over the ruined mess of clay and Ejio looked up. Backlit by the light of the sun stood a man and for a second Ejio felt hope. Had Simple returned?

The man moved. "You should be more careful." Ikoma Redosha, wandering bard of the Inner City, stood with a smirk upon his face.

The sculptor nodded slightly at the bard's words, his eyes returning to his work as he looked over the ruined clay. There was something to be made from this. From the shedding of darkness. From the escape of a soul from shadows to the light. Whatever Simple truly was before, perhaps he can return to in the next life now. He placed more clay between the split halves and began to shape it once more, leaving the bisected samurai in place but letting something rise from the ruin. His vanity forced him to fix some details and alter the shape of the torn ronin to be cleaner but otherwise left it untouched while he replied.

"I should be. And perhaps, if I am not unlucky enough to die before I learn, I will be. For today, however, I suppose I will just have to rely on the watchful eyes of those who still want me whole."

“Why Ejio-san, should you die it would be a day of great tragedy upon which I should lament ten-thousand words and immortalize you in a play. How could the son of a Champion, a man of such remarkable talents in so many facets of life ever be considered unlucky?”

 

Redosha lifted a thick clay bottle with a strange demonic face on its surface. Ejio recognized it as one of Yasuki Hitoshi’s works. He heard the sloshing in the bottle as the bard upended it for a long pull.

 

When finished the Lion wiped his mouth with his sleeve and grinned.

 

“I have heard so many rumors of late swirling around the Crane and Kurotema’s servants that I felt I must come and visit you myself. Are you well, Ejio-san? Do you find the burden of authority too demanding? May I sit?”

"You know as well as I that it is the flames that burn the brightest that flame out the most violently. But I am fine, of course. Merely more contemplative than usual. Sit! Sit! Join me as we discover what the clay holds today."

Ejio continued to mold the clay, twisting, pulling, and shaping it restoration, imagining the rising soul that was released from the darkness.

"So tell me Redosha-san, what brings you to the gardens today?"

Redosha watched the Crane’s fingers mold the clay and took another sip from his bottle.
 
“Well, rumor has it war is coming to Otosan Uchi. Others might find this troubling, but I for one welcome the prospect of violence. It brings ruin and destruction and out of that rise potential stories. What is a hero without a trial to overcome? What is a story without a conflict? What new thing was ever wrought without first destroying something old?”
 
The Ikoma smirked and slurred his words a little. Ejio could smell the strong pine-scent of his sake. He could see the bloodshot eyes. The Ikoma might say that he welcomed the coming violence, but Ejio could see that something concerned him. Something weighed quite heavy indeed.
 
From the mind we learn much about identity. What does his say? Do you want us to show you?
 
Ejio was not quite certain which of the two voices had spoken…
 
OOC: Same roll as above to differentiate if you wish to do so.
 
Let me know if there are other rolls you want to make.

"Does war bring rumors or do rumors bring war? I am deeply saddened that violence seems to be the direction our fair city is headed but you are correct, sometimes it is only through such adversity that heroes arise. If I am lucky, I shall get to immortalize them in my works. Still, there will be so much loss. So many grander struggles ignored because we must create ones we understand."

Ejio shook his head and poured himself a cup of sake, letting his eyes finally deviate from the Ikoma. He listened to the voice, annoyed that he still couldn't tell which one spoke to him. There was danger in the offer either way though he inherently felt a trust for the voice of caution. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes while he drank, contemplating the Lion's tone, his stance, and his mannerisms. Ryosin had helped to teach him how to spot the methods of an actor but he knew he was still a novice.

(Inv/Awareness for Voices: 52 http://orokos.com/roll/343324
Act/Awareness to notice deception via acting (shows training under Ryosin; if you don't like this, I rolled Inv/Per in a traditional manner as a second roll): 31 http://orokos.com/roll/343328
Inv/Per: 3 http://orokos.com/roll/343329

Keikoku, the ancient spirit of the Shadow-Grotto.


Ejio knew it was the more benevolent of the two spirits, eager and willing to pierce the veil of the mind and speak of Redosha.

As the Crane observed the tipsy Lion he searched for the subtle cues of an actor, but if this man where acting his performance was beyond reproach. There were no signs, none of the tell-tale affectations that would give him away. Yet, that in and off itself seemed to hide some knowledge.

Redosha sat a little wobbly, his eyes were bloodshot as if from lack of sleep, his breath smelled and he appeared disheveled. All signs of a drunk, of an artist falling on hard times. It was eerily reminiscent of another artisan the Crane knew...and despised.

Redosha grinned at Ejio's words.

"Statues of the violence placed before the ancestral halls of the city to commemorate the death and glory of the citizens of Otosan Uchi! Ah, what world we live in that the memory is greater than the person, Ejio. Yet," he lifted his cup of sake, "never would I give it up."

Do it.

The thought came forward with a sense of appreciation for the offer from the spirit.

"Yes, there is much to be gained in what is to come, but there is much to be lost. There will be song inspired by bravery, but there will be songs unsung by those that fell. Who is to say which are greater?"

Even has he spoke, his mind wandered a little, the vision of the gray field in which the dead roamed stealing his attention. Ejio still did not understand why, but he knew that others were with him in these moments of dark silence, sharing in the world that he had to offer.

Ikoma Redosha raised his cup, full once more, and said something, but Doji Ejio did not hear.

Instead the normal preternatural calm of Meido was shattered by a vision of a man. He wore a thousand masks, all at once, stacked atop one another in a laughable parody of the art of acting. Where one mask may have given him disguised, the thousand shattered his psyche and sent his mind spiraling into a tumult of insanity.

He does not know. How could he know? He does not understand that he wears too many faces.

Redosha said something pithy, but Ejio saw through the façade of old tales and alcohol. The man’s eyes told the tale, a story that began with a question:

Who am I, he wonders. Who is he indeed.

Mask after mask slipped away in a dizzying array until Ejio was no longer certain what was real and what was not. There, at the heart of it all, the poisonous tail of a Scorpion biting deep into a dying Crane. Or was the Crane coming back to life? Was the Scorpion losing all its venom and falling prey to the rising spectre of yet another mask?

He is shattered. He has tried for so long to be someone else that he can no longer remember who it is he once was. Soon, he must decide. But he does not yet know it. He plays games with a too high price.

Redosha stood, wobbly, and bowed. Ejio saw a hundred more masks fall from his face to the ground and he knew. Ikoma Redosha was no more real than the statues he created.

Or perhaps it was because they were created by an artisan, an actor, that they became real.

When Redosha stood, Ejio saw the final mask slip away. The face of a man stripped of glory, stripped of power, bereft of alliance, stood alone. Stark. Naked. Empty. Desperately searching for a persona to latch onto and flailing about with wild abandon.

The man was lost and in the end he would grasp at straws until he drowned in a sea of personality.

Redosha rose from his bow and turned to leave.

Doji Ejio watched in silence as Bayushi Akedare walked away knowing now his secret. The man wanted desperately to be something he was not. A Crane lord beloved by his people, held in high regard.

Instead, he was this…thing. A maskless actor without hope.

The Crane artisan sat in silence well after his opposition left. He considered the insanity the actor suffered and the dangers of the obsession Akedare suffered. A meloncholy air clung to Ejio as he returned to working on the sculpture before him. His hands moved slowly as he continued to consider Akedare.

There was so much damage done to that man's mind. There was so much damage done by that man. Ejio knew that there would be a reckoning but it did not make him happy. It did not make him content to know that the lost Bayushi would suffer. Had there not been so much damage, had the victims not been so close to him, Ejio knew that he would work to save the dark artisan from himself.

Ejio finished the sculpture and turned away, not even looking at what his hands had wrought. He knew that it favored the dark nature of the grotto. It was a shadow and a rebirth; a success and a failure. Without glancing at it, he knew it captured the duality of the grotto. Hopefully it sated both of the voices for the moment. He would be back soon enough to find out.

END