Open Page of Wands

[Jintou]

The Upright Page of Wands

This is a journey that begins with a spark of inspiration. Because what does it mean to lead a life of adventure without the motivation to seek it out? We tell the stories of thrill-seekers who hush harmony for the sake of e tellable experience in life. This is a world full of mystery and wonder, and it begs to be explored, just as this child on the cusp of adulthood yearns to discover themselves. Who is Jintou, besides the Third Sun of House Oba?

Our story began within one of the many workshops filling the Hall of Hammers. Echos of metal howling from the quelch provided a unique ambiance, with more rings of steel beating hot ingots into shape. Jintou was there, busily packing an inventory into a hefty satchel. A warm glow of a crystalline lamp highlighted his bronze complexion as he examined a fine pickaxe. As a son of House Oba, he knew how to swing a pick well enough. In another timeline, he might have become a true miner like his uncle or brothers, but Jintou left home long before he could develop the physique to delve with his kin. Alas, though he might have missed that chance, it did not mean that day would never come. So with his eyes on the pickaxe, a look of determination fixed itself upon his tightening jaw.

“I’m honored that you’d invite me along for this delve, Lord Aki,” those earnest words were spoken from Jintou, aimed at the fine craftsman responsible for his cobalt jacket. Despite the aforementioned gift seeming like an arrangement between Doctor Saitou Kurohane and the smith, Jintou felt both a sense of admiration and obligation towards Aki. “I’ve been into a quartz tunnel before, but only long enough to run lunches down to my elders. So… a chance to venture down and get hands-on; it’s like have a chance to prove myself.” Jintou formed a thumb up and grinned at Aki, and revealed childish eagerness, the sort so sorely missed among older, jaded shinobi. “I’ll show you how strong my earth step has become; we won’t even need these picks.”

Still set on the table were two cube-shaped curiosities, apparently loaned items of exceptional quality from The Order of Journeyman. The first resembled a small, tightly banded crate with two rope handles. The two-hammers symbol of the Order was emblazoned on the box in a black brand. According to the provided instructions, the box could magically unfold to become an entire boat, with oars, on command. The creation was called a Folding Boat. The second contraption was simply a crystalline lantern with a full belly of oil. It had a hood welded into the frame that could isolate its light into a beam with the slide of a lever. What made this simple lantern fascinating was an enchantment that caused it to glow with an otherworldly tinted flame whenever precious and rare ore was nearby, only turning brighter the closer you got. A long list of colors and meaning accompanied the lamp, with enough specificity that the paper unfurled from your hands to the floor. Less familiar with the likes of magical things, Jintou deferred the decision of who takes what to his senior, even seeming content with Aki taking both if he saw fit.

• Jintou has entered the Thread
• Requesting @Takahashi Aki
• wc557

 

[Takahashi Aki]

Aki let out a low chuckle as he listened to Jintou explain his history in mining. He nodded his head, “Most people think quartz is a useless stone, but I’ve found a good few uses for it. It’s a decent enough conductor when it is conditioned properly. Most people think little of mining, and yes while it has an abusive history behind it, there is still a much needed skill - especially for those who intend to work with metals and precious ores.” He paused for a moment. He would look up for a moment. He would frown for a moment, “There is an unfortunate history to mining. A very abusive and dark history – shame that. That being said there is a practical lesson to learn, like how not to split gems and damage them.” Jintou would mention how he had grown in power since their last meeting. He spoke of how he had improved and strengthened his earth step. While Jintou would think that it would trivialize the whole matter, Aki knew differently. He would smile at Jintou, “We will see. Not everything will be as it seems.” What Jintou was going to see was something very different. It was still mining, but ... Jintou would need to see it to truly understand it. Sometimes one needed to see something as words were not the best way to convey things.

***

Aki would take both objects and for good reason. Their destination was a strange one. Aki would unfold the boat and set it down in the murk, it was not water and it was not oil either. The liquid the two would transverse through upon the folding boat was viscous and very much like molasses. “Don’t stare into the lights. Stay in the boat at all times.” Aki warned the boy as they would continue their ride through the absolute darkness. What they travelled through and from made no sense. It seemed like they were travelling through liquid darkness, and then through a vast coldness. Aki watched his breath appear upon breathing deeply in and out. From time to time he would reveal a compass with a strange foreign language upon it. He would tilt the boat ever so slightly. The compass would then lose all manner of direction and would spin about widely. It seemed like for a time they were up the river with no paddle. The rowing did nothing, and then it seemed like they were spinning about in the darkness. Through this time Aki said nothing and they continued to move through this deep and brooding darkness. If Jintou looked hard enough he would notice Aki’s expression almost became canine. His sharp eyes swapped between the compass and the path forward, whatever the path was. “Two more minutes.” Those two minutes felt like two hours. Jintou would see shapes behind to emerge and a distant light would be in their future. The boat would stop and it sounded like they hit rock. Aki would motion for Jintou to get out of the boat.

“Where we’re going, one needs a strong will and not a map. Not for the weak minded.” He spoke as he got out of the boat and began to fold it up. He would throw the compass at Jintou to have a look at.

 

[Jintou]

Tales of legend might awaken the bravery within you, but what about tales of the unknown? Perhaps every Terran child is reared with youths full of stories about the desert and its many dangers. The many triumphs of man against powers both ancient and primal are well documented, and in some way, inspire hope that you can survive out there with your wits about you. But can the same be said about the depths of the unknown?

It is the depths of the undersea where the brave go to die.

Young hands clutched the oars, pressing till his knuckles paled. Flexing, breathing hard, Jintou worked the paddled ends through a strange soup enveloping their seaworthy vessel. “The folding boat was strong and reliable”, or so the words suggested as they repeated in Jintou’s mind like a mantra. There, stroking across the still waters in the dark, the pair of would-be miners moved through some impossibly large cavern. The air was as cold as the wet dirt of a grave, and just as stale. For some time the only light was that of their lantern, which swung uneasily from a chain. It was only once his bearing of spatial awareness began to slip that Jintou began to see reflections of light in the distance as if the lantern’s light were bouncing impossibly off of distant structures. The words of warning from Aki were all that kept Jintou from leaning over the folding boat’s edge, likely provoking whatever strange things blinked motes of light below.

By the time the folding boat was taken by a silky current and the stroking oars seemed pointless, Jintou felt no choice but to pull in his paddles along with the seasoned Aki. “The air is getting thinner” noted Jintou as he sat with a crooked lean to the rear of their boat. The boy found himself feeling unsure whether the aching in his lungs was a product of the oxygen lessening so deep within the earth, the gripping cold pressing upon them, or simply him experiencing another panic attack. “And it’s getting so cold…” he added, punctuating the words with a sharp exhale to watch the mist seep from his mouth in a spurt. He rubbed his frail hands together to generate a little heat, the pressed them against his cheeks.

Perhaps topping Jintou’s discomfort was a familiar pain of pressure rising behind his eyes; the onset of a migraine so frequently preceding triggers of his Gye Nyamme, or Senrigan. Despite efforts to prepare for those moments of awakening, Jintou has merely learned to settle himself safely when those instances of clairvoyance were impending. Desperately, he had the boat rocking as he slid down to his knees on the floor and grabbed the bench as if a tidal wave was coming. His back straightened, joints popping as he heaved back into a sudden flex of ocular power. Two diamond eyes flashed as his vision was blinded by glorious light.

The impeccable brightness then dimmed to reveal a splinter of reality. Jintou stood within a sea of bioluminescent fungi that grew to the size of trees and in every color. He was squeezed between two mushrooms and broke free, only to discover a grand tree. Nestled with a cavern wall was a massive daisun poplar, rooted perfectly sideways, and grown so humongous that it morphed second roots to the opposing wall. Powerful and adaptive, the limbs of the poplar had grown outward from its center, resembling a floral disc with leaves of glass that glowed like moonlight. The bark of the daisun poplar was pitch black. Mesmerized, Jintou moved through the splinter of time and space, fancifully lost in the unknown until the many bright creatures began to dimmer and wither. Wherever he tread, the mushrooms began to die until darkness spread outwards from him. Suddenly the cavern turned dark with the exception of the daisun poplar, which began to turn red like a blood moon, so full of rage. With a fade to crimson, the vision came to an end.

Those words, “two minutes” pierced into Jintou’s consciousness as he was snapping back to reality. With every fading vision, the boy returned to a puzzled and frightened state. This time, the streak of a crystalline tear froze into frost trailing down from one eye.

“Yes, please... Let’s get off this water,” conceded Jintou as he eagerly followed Aki off of the folding boat. Still feeling the tension of his eyes’ empowerment, Jintou was, perhaps for the first time, stuck in a state of continued awakening. “This place is the farthest from natural” warned the boy, speaking with wisdom that didn’t suit an academy student. “We are... treading into great danger down here, Lord Aki.”
While Jintou was often subject to instances of clairvoyance when endangered, the Gye Nyamme never remained active longer than an instant. Their peril was insurmountable. Could anything ahead of the shinobi pair quantify their delve into the dangers of the Undersea?

wc824

 

[Takahashi Aki]

Aki would fold up the boat and tuck it away for safe keeping in his backpack. Jintou’s uneasiness made sense. Given his bloodline abilities it made sense. In truth Aki in part was pushing Jintou to be even better than he currently was. Even if the face of something you were not too keen on, you sometimes had to simply soldier on. Aki would hold out his hand and create a singular orb of plasma. The burning orb would levitate in front of them. Jintou spoke of how this place was far from natural. “We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are alien in a natural world. Perhaps this is how we should have always been, outside of the natural word. We control the elements. We make bargains with darker powers.” Aki spoke in a low monotone voice. It was an unnaturally cold moment from him, in the sense that Aki had a very unique approach to the human condition. His childhood very much shaped the view he had on people. The image of corpses of Suna Nin struck together to form a ‘work of art’ by Shouki of the Cabal was something no child should have seen. The image was haunting and very much haunted Aki since his single digit years. Aki had a very low opinion of people, whereas Jintou had a higher opinion of people. That was perhaps what drew him to wanting to befriend him. Perhaps he wanted Jintou to help him get over his low opinion of people as a whole.

“We are... treading into great danger down here, Lord Aki.”

Aki would nod his head. “Greater the danger, usually greater the reward. It wasn’t always like this down here. Perhaps being cut off is what keeps a greater danger at bay that being the exploitation of the Daimyo of Sora, or perhaps the greed of man.” Aki would explain. As the two of them walked together, Aki would guide Jintou to what it was that Aki wanted him to see. At first the youth would see crystalline electric blue roots. Aki led Jintou towards the root, which would then begin to become roots. Eventually the two would come across a great crystalline tree. The tree’s branches would span up into the ceiling of the cavern which seemed limitless. The crystalline tree crackled and coursed with blue electricity. It was not an overtly horrific sight, it was not natural, but based on what Aki had said earlier nothing ever seemed to obey the rules of normality. “Here. This is what I wanted to show you.” Aki would look upon the tree. He would fold his hands and hold them behind his back. “This tree was planted by my father quite some time ago, when he was a young man. He was once gifted a seedling from a woman from a far off land. It grew to became this, and suffice it to say it contains power that can be used to do great good and great evil. This is what we are here to collect from.” Aki would look over to Jintou. He was most curious as to how he was going to react unto this secret, this secret that was lost to most mortal eyes.

 

[Jintou]

The ocular powers of his Nye Gyamme interplaying with mundane vision were unlike any experience I could easily explain. But imagine something akin to afterimagery, only, rather than the wisps of trailing illusion, threads of alternate outcomes proceed translucently in real-time. Take this as an example: you flip a coin— Jintou sees it fall on heads, but faintly on tails in a gray overlay but it landed two centimeters to the left, and another head in a clenched fist, and a fourth outcome where the coin bounced out of your hand and rolled along the floor to be crunched under your shoe to a stop. The experience was taxing, to say the least, and had Jintou trailing behind Aki as they made for some the tunnel.

Plasmatic chakra registered like wildfire to Jintou’s sight in his present state, ever warbling and shifting to unpredictable sizes in realities why Aki did not have the same levels of control. All of these variants held their intense brightness in common though and forced Jintou to look away with his hand raised to shield his sensitive eyes. He even let out a grunt in consternation as the light brought on more pain from the Gye Nyamme.

“Elder Ko’ona said that the first tribe was created to toil the land for the ancient ones” disputed Jintou in reply to Aki’s assertion about mankind being unnatural. “But the ancients were not perfect; they were the first to arrive hungry with greed, and the hubris to give the first tribe a land to work... not thinking that we might create tools of our own.” Though Jintou might have sounded wise beyond his years, they were more or less the words of his father: a frequent source of conversation during the harvesting season at home. “Unnatural, no… invasive, yes” he dared to correct his senior. “It is the error of your ancestors Lord Aki, who lost their understanding of our origin in nature, that has led you to see us as unnatural when mankind has always been meant to shepherd nature, not conquer.” Again, the words of Patron Father Shinsou fled Jintou’s lips as he looked upon Aki with his eyes glowing like arcane gemstones.

And those beautiful blue orbs widened, aghast as Jintou followed Aki into an adjacent chamber where they found the very Daisun Poplar from his vision. The crystalline tree was similar to that from his vision yet distinctly different— the cavern was still expansive, but the tree stood rooting to the ground rather than a wall and ran high to the ceiling. At first, Jintou stood back with pursed lips, holding tightly to that awareness of his previous version and the blood-red glow. Instead, he was scanning their surroundings in an attempt to drive another premonition out of hiding. The sound of Aki explaining his father’s deeds with a hint of pride echoed through the space.

“Why did he do that?” Jintou asked sharply, and with a tinge of worry akin to a sibling when watching the other fumble in their effort to steal cookies from one of their mother’s stashes. “The Daisun Poplar gives birth to nature, but interrupts the one in place.” It was rather reckless to engage in terraforming deep below ground, and twice as so without making an effort to watch over your results. Wanton creation without the wisdom to consider what that creation might become… how familiar. “Aki… why would he do that?”

While the initial differences from the present cavern and the one from Jintou’s vision were not so stark, the floor arrangement of the Daisun Poplar seemed to have affected the growth of the many mushroom stalks within the vast chamber. The floor was like a forest of haunting bioluminescence, glowing in shades of reds to yellows and in between, and the occasional shifts towards blue. In the distance, there was the sound of lurching and ripping, but no sound of a creature’s breath or grunt. The forest of fungi began to slowly come alive around them, and the promised danger was finally upon the shinobi.

“I can see them…” Jintou warned as he looked forward with a forty-yard stare. There was no threat visible to mundane eyes, so he must have been speaking in future-tense. “Monsters… They are going to try to prevent us from reaching the seedling, and… there’s only two, wait— one… or was their three? “And we can’t breathe.” And then, taking a deep breath the clairvoyant boy warned, “don’t start a fire or we’re both dead.”

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[Takahashi Aki]

Aki grunted. He had either said it wrong or Jintou had misunderstood what he said. He would need to take a moment to fix that. “You misunderstand.” He began, “It’s not my ancestors who have this belief. It’s me.” He frowned outwardly. “There’s a lot of things--” He paused, his eyes narrowed as he stared forward. “There’s a lot of things that happened in my childhood that dictate—“ He shook his head, there was frustration present, but it was aimed at himself for the most part. “Forget it. This wasn’t meant to be about me.” He spoke lowly. Aki very much had a very dark view of humanity based on the Jashin religion. Was Aki being corrected? Probably. At the very least he was being corrected on a philosophical level. He was not going to say Jintou was right or wrong. He was though going to correct him on what he said. His father, the Steward of Sungakure, very much had a different opinion of people. His father was very much tied up on the natural science of things. Aki was very much a pessimist, whereas his father would very much argue out the positives based on the law of averages.

Aki raised an eyebrow when he was asked why his father did this. “Do what? Plant the tree? There was nothing here. He developed it on his own time.” He answered sharply. “It’s been like this for an age. He did his calculations. Father never acts without doing the math. Everything works out like clockwork for him. I mean … like ninety-eight percent of it.” He would answer. He would listen next to what was being said. It didn’t make a lick of sense at all. Aki wasn’t going to question it yet. He would quietly mull things over as the next words were said. Alright then... so next up there were going to be monsters? Easy enough to deal with for him. Aki was confident enough that he could protect the two of them. He would quietly flick his wrist and produce Shadow Fox. He would take a deep breath himself. The apex predator would watch soon enough as three little misshapen figures would appear just on queue like Jintou said they would. Aki’s eyes would glow black as he trained his eyes on them. He was reading their movements, slow but steady, almost crippled-like but that could have been a ruse. More data was required.

The creatures in question resembled a misshapen flightless bird that had undergone some form of adaptive evolution. The bodies were slickened by oil? Their beaks were twisted and spiked, but very solid. It was their primary method of attacking. There would be some deep wounds if one were very much stabbed by these beaks. They had leather-like wings to them that bore several more spikes. The wings looked way too heavy but impossibly long. Flawed they were and that was perhaps why flight was not an option for these bird like creatures. Something was amiss though, how did these creatures get here if the way was sealed shut to humans. Nature did find a way, but nature did not adhere to the laws of man. Given their oily bodies, indeed starting a fire would perhaps spell the doom for all of them.

Aki stood there, and cocked his head to the side as he watched them waddle about.