Fates Parallel Chapter 244 - Reevaluation

Ienaga didn’t provide any elaboration or field any questions after her declaration.

“We’ll meet back here tomorrow evening to discuss further plans. Your Highness, would you mind staying behind briefly? I need to discuss something with you in private.”

Seong Misun shrugged dismissively.

“Sure, why not?”

“The rest of you feel free to avail yourselves of Okou’s hospitality, such as it is. You’ve already met Minami and the others, and I’m sure they’d be happy to accommodate you.”

Jia was too stunned to do anything other than accept the dismissal. She rose from her seat and bowed to her former teacher.

“Yes, Master. Thank you for everything.”

Master Ienaga returned the bow.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, girls.”

They all filed out of the building, a little bit lost about what to do while they waited. Jung was the first to break the silence as they loitered outside of the command building.

“So that was the woman who taught you martial arts? She seems nice, if a bit intense. And she was the kindest of your instructors?”

Eui snickered.

“Sort of? Magus Hwang was pretty friendly too, when he wasn’t looking at us like he wanted to vivisect us for his research, but Master Ienaga was definitely the dean that was most like a mentor to us.”

Ja Yun stared into the middle distance with a far away expression.

“Ancestors, that explains so much...”

Rika snorted and shook her head.

“I’m pretty sure Yoshika were as intense as they are well before Master Ienaga got to them. Anyway, what do you girls want to do?”

Jia shrugged.

“I kind of want to see if I can find Murayoshi. It would be good to catch up with him after all these years.”

Rika grimaced.

“Your funeral I guess. You’re on your own with that one. I’d rather go catch up with Hana and the others.”

Jung nodded in agreement.

“I don’t think I could handle the whiplash from meeting your least kind instructor so soon after Master Ienaga. Besides, I could use a rest...it’s been a long day.”

Jia and Eui parted with the rest of the group to go find the ornery old blacksmith that had taught them how to make their own artifact. Once they knew to look, it wasn’t hard to find him—his tsukumogami spirit familiar, Forge, had a distinct aura that was unmistakable for anything else.

They could hear the roar of the furnace and the signature din of hammer on steel as they approached, Murayoshi hard at work as ever. Thinking back on it, Jia couldn’t recall a time when she’d ever seen the man not working.

His smithy was almost exactly as it had been in the academy. The same tools, the same furnace, the same cramped open-air workspace. The only difference is that instead of the array of benches hopelessly bereft of any students that could tolerate the grumpy old smith’s...unorthodox teaching methods, there were racks and racks of weapons. Spears, swords, entire bundles of arrows, and others that Jia scarcely even recognized. She’d never been fond of using weapons herself, and while Eui occasionally wielded knives or swords, Jia’s martial styles were strictly hand-to-hand.

The smith himself was as grizzled and scarred as ever, his scraggly gray hair grew down to his shoulders and blended in with his beard, both of which seemed to be kept at length mainly by occasionally being burned in whatever fire he happened to work with. He was stout and muscular, with his thick musculature on display as he shrugged out of the top half of his Yamato style robe.

The man didn’t look up as they approached, but nevertheless spoke, his gravelly voice and thick dialect just as they remembered it.

“Yer late, girlies! Do I look like the kinda man what’s got time to wait fer tardy disciples?!”

Eui crossed her arms and raised an incredulous eyebrow at Murayoshi.

“Well excuse us, but the academy got taken over by demons. You were there! You were the one evacuating people.”

He spat to the side.

“Feh! I didn’t ask fer yer feckin’ excuses! Show me what you got, and if it ent perfect as it can be after three years it’s goin’ in the fire an’ I’m disowning ye both as disciples.”

Jia shook her head and chuckled.

“I didn’t realize we were your disciples, Grandmaster.”

“I told ye not to call me that! Now quit yer yappin’ and get on with it!”

Straight to the point, as ever. Grandmaster Murayoshi never had been one for social graces, and his abrasive attitude has lost him more than a few students—Jia suspected he liked it that way. To her knowledge, Master Ienaga Yumi was the only other student who’d been stubborn enough to stick with the old man to the end.

The girls produced their artifact, an enchanted pair of gloves that represented their union, their friends, their path, and each other—The Claws of Heaven and the Fist of Earth. They had created the gloves together at the academy, learning how to work with immortal-grade materials and creating something to represent themselves—two distinct items that worked together as a pair.

Over the years, they’d refined it with enchanted inscriptions woven from the essence of themselves and their friends. Jia’s essence allowed Eui to channel Lightning through her body without it being neutralized by her Destruction ki, and vice versa. Heian’s essence gave them greater control over Shadow, especially as Yoshika. Yan Yue had contributed as well, her Light and Dark elements improving the other aspects of the gloves. Though Dae had not contributed his essence directly, his designs had inspired the inscription that allowed them to see into—and out of—the spirit realm while they wore the gloves. Finally, Takeda Rika’s contribution was still something of a mystery to them, but they hoped that it would help towards their long-term goal of creating Heian her own body to inhabit.

Murayoshi snatched the gloves—their most prized possessions—out of their hands and scowled down at them in disgust.

“What in all the kamis’ names are these?! I feckin’ told ye to capture something external! Ye think I don’t know yer path, girlies?! Ye got yer friends to help, but it’s all you you you! Ye didn’t complete the second lesson at all, idjits! Didn’t even start it! Utter feckin’ failure.”

He punctuated his rant by unceremoniously hurling the pair of gloves into his furnace. The first time he’d done that, Jia had nearly jumped in after them, stopped only by the man himself catching her before she could hurt herself. This time, she didn’t even flinch. Jia knew that Murayoshi had a tendency to overreact, but she trusted his spirit familiar to keep her precious artifact safe. Forge had never interacted directly with Jia, except to let her view Murayoshi’s crafting process once, but the spirit seemed much more level-headed than her partner.

In fact, the furnace dimmed visibly before Murayoshi had even begun the motion to toss them in. Jia reached out with her domain to touch Forge’s, drawing on all the practice Heian had given her in communicating with spirits to radiate a feeling of appreciation, nostalgia, and exasperation. Forge responded with surprise, delight, commiseration, greeting, and an overwhelming surge of other concepts that Jia had difficulty parsing—for all her practice, she was still a novice.

Eui sighed and went to retrieve the gloves from the furnace, but Murayoshi ignored her to continue his rant.

“Failures, failures, an’ more failures! Just what I’d expect from Yumi’s lot! Bah! They ent half bad as personal artifacts, but ye ain’t cut out for the path o’ makin’. The point is to create tools anyone can use! Where’re yer other friends, eh? The moron what kept wasting his time makin’ glaives, or the girlie wit’ all the hair frills? ‘Least they had potential!”

Eui returned with the gloves, handing Jia the Fist of Earth as she answered the Grandmaster’s question.

“You mean Guan Yi and Yan Yue? They had to go back home to Qin, remember? Actually, we’re just on our way to go meet them once our business here is finished.”

At that, the surly old smith was given pause for once.

“Yer goin’ to Qin? Huh. Well good luck wit’ that! If ye live to see ‘em, tell those idjits they’re overdue to bring their work back to me.”

Jia crossed her arms.

“What about Dae and Eunae? Also, I thought you were disowning us as disciples—why should we do anything for you?”

“Tch, smartass! Book boy an’ the princess are too much like the two o’ ye—too caught up in their own heads. They ent right for the path. I only took ‘em in ‘cause Forge took a likin’ to ‘em—same as ye. An’ if I really disowned ye, Forge’d throw a tantrum. Last time I made ‘er mad, she spoiled all my steel for a year. I ent riskin’ it.”

“Right...well, we’ll let them know you were asking, I guess. While we’re here, do you have any suggestions for how to move forward with our artifact? We’ve made a lot of progress, but we don’t know how to complete them.”

Murayoshi spat to the side.

“Complete it?! Feckin’ idjits! Those artifacts are a symbol of yer path! They’ll be complete when yer path is complete—that is to say, never! They’ll grow as you do, so long as ye keep takin’ care of ‘em. Jus’ keep doin’ what yer doin’.”

The girls bowed gratefully.

“Thank you for your wisdom, Grandmaster.”

“Feh! Quit callin’ me that. If yer done wastin’ my time, I got work to do.”

Jia hesitated. There actually was one other thing she wanted to inquire about, but she didn’t know how to broach the subject.

“There is, um, one other thing, actually? It’s about Heian—do you remember—”

“Ye ent sucked up her essence for yer cultivation yet? Hmph, there’s hope for ye yet. What about her?”

“Well...we’ve been trying to figure out ways to give her a body of her own. We tried copying the techniques of an Onmyouji, but Heian would have been stuck in a shikigami vessel and that’s not what we want for her.”

Murayoshi narrowed his eyes, and set his jaw.

“Snoopin’ around the priests, eh? An’ what’s this gotta do with me?”

Jia and Eui exchanged a nervous glance.

“W-well, instead of that we’ve been working towards a simulacrum technique with the help of Takeda Rika. We’re hoping to craft Heian her own body entirely out of essence and well...you’re the only person we know who’s done that before.”

The old blacksmith’s face darkened.

“I dunno what Yumi told ye, but I ent doin’ that anymore. An’ if ye know what’s right, you won’t try neither. Nothing good can come of it.”

Jia shook her head.

“This is different! We’re not asking you to—”

“Ye don’t even know what yer askin’! Ye weren’t there! It weren’t yer niece’s screams ye had to listen to day after day until her throat was raw an’ bloody! Ye didn’t have to witness her corpse being puppeted around by an innocent spirit what didn’t know any better, only to be blasted into dust by a tribulation! Yer not the ones responsible fer turnin’ an ambitious young girl into a monster for an ideal as empty an’ vapid as strength! I made the mistake of rippin’ my niece’s soul out an’ stickin’ it in a killin’ machine, an’ I won’t let nobody repeat it!”

As he finished his rant, he hurled his hammer at Jia with all his might. Rather than flinch back or run away, Yoshika effortlessly caught the hammer out of the air with one hand. It didn’t even feel heavy to her, and for a moment she was struck with the impulse to crush it to dust. She could do it—even as enchanted as it was, it wouldn’t withstand her techniques. For all that she respected Murayoshi’s wisdom as her mentor’s teacher, she was probably actually stronger than he was—not accounting for Forge.

She shook her head and sighed. That wasn’t her way. Instead she called Heian forth from her domain and handed the hammer off to her, glaring at the old man as she responded in Jia’s voice.

“First of all, Grandmaster Ienaga Murayoshi, we take exception to you calling our master and mentor a monster. Master Ienaga gave us guidance when we needed it most, and placed her life on the line to protect us. You sully her name with your self-deprecation and we will not stand for it.”

Yoshika slipped the gloves on, and her soul sight allowed her to see Forge’s true form—a humanoid phantom of liquid flame that had draped herself over her partner’s shoulders in a comforting gesture. Yoshika knelt down with Eui’s body and put an arm around Heian’s shoulders.

“Second, if you insist on refusing to help, then you can tell our daughter to her face why you don’t think she should be allowed to have her own physical form independent of us. Go on, Heian—introduce yourself.”

The little spirit girl glanced back up at Yoshika hesitantly, then stepped forward and held the hammer up to Murayoshi, meeting his eyes with her deep blue gaze.

“Hello. I’m Heian. You dropped this.”