Before I knew it, I was witnessing the sun’s first rays, and embattled with neck pain and a dull, but persistent headache. I drag myself to my feet, sliding my katana back into my belt and arranging it against my wakizashi. I pull my bag up, throwing it on as I shut my secondary ears and shamble around, soon wandering into the vicinity of a public bench. After I pull my katana back out of my belt, I drop myself into it, leaning back and watching the sun rise while my brain finished powering up-and I’m gonna need that brainpower, because I have one hell of a riddle ahead of me.

I pull my bag off my shoulder, opening the notebook which contained several different scraps of street poetry written down, recorded so I could compile them into something useful. I sit there for several minutes, trying to smash different scraps together, but it feels like nothing fits, like this wasn’t actually intended to be used as a covert recruitment method. I then thought to myself about the perilous contradiction between the riddles being so obscure that they were useless for actual recruiting, and riddles so easy that anyone could find them. That being said, the very concept sounds preposterous on its face-like a fable, or a fairy tale, so who would really try…?

My next idea feels foolish, but it’s worth a try-simply put together whatever seems straightforward to me. After a few minutes of hunting around, I got ‘The steel’s salvation rests between the tsuba that governs it and the recovering refuge of the saya’. I pull out my phone, and think of the meaning of the riddle. ‘Governance of the tsuba’, that could mean counseling, or the tsuba could mean protection, which implies a police station… I then force myself to recall the advice that got me this far to begin with. ‘Governance’ is a few steps away from ‘government’, so I search for government buildings on my phone, and find a small array, including a few town halls. Now for the ‘recovering refuge’, which probably refers to a hotel, or perhaps a motel. It did specify ‘recovering’, though, which instead implied a hospital.

Not wanting to have to rely on memory at this time of the morning, I open my brochure map and cross-reference the locations of nearby hospitals with the government buildings I had found on my phone. It takes a little while, but I narrow down my best guess to a mostly-straight area of the city that was at most two miles long. There’s other possible areas, but this one seems the least torturous to comb first.

It would take a little while to get there, though, not to mention me getting lost in this city’s streets and alleyways. Sliding my notebook back into my bag and then my katana into my belt, I get moving.

I did get time for my feet to rest for quite a while, but by the time I was actually searching the strip, my feet were already getting sore again. I see several buildings of note, but none that really screamed out to me as being viable hideouts for a secret swordsmanship school. Among other things, I see a daycare, a bakery, and a church, but I don’t find the lead I was looking for.

I almost decided to give up and walk another strip, until my newly-developed mantra hit me in the face yet again. What if we took ‘salvation’ literally? I walk back, and have another, closer look at the church. It’s clearly quite old, even going so far as to appear abandoned from a cursory glance, and bordered with a Victorian style fence adorned with tops that more resembled pikes than mere fence-posts.

I walk to the front gate. It’s locked, but it’s got a knocker that feels almost comically large, and well-worn almost to the point of disrepair. It is, however, conspicuously rust-free. I slam the knocker into the gate, louder than I honestly mean to, and stare at the front door of the church proper with tired eyes. I fall into a daze and lose track of how long I’m staring at the door until it opens and a man steps out.

The man did not look young, and he’s draped in something roughly resembling the robes of a Christian monk— an occupation I thought was long dead. To be completely be honest, he looked more like something out of a LARP session than anyone that would be manning a modern church-but I have the feeling that this is not a normal church at all. He walks down a stone brick stairway leading down a balcony onto the yard, and along the path that stemmed from it to the front gate. “What brings you here?” His voice, and the way he asked his question, I almost couldn’t believe that this man wasn’t an actor out of a Shakespearean play.

“I seek the Haracrein, which rests in the space between the tsuba and the saya.” He tilts his head as if he’s not sure what to do next, and I realize that I got the details of the riddle wrong. Still, I’m almost dead on, so the idea of him turning me down on a technicality agitated my already weary mind. “Oh, yeah, I got the details of the riddle wrong, do you need me to be more specific?”

The figure snaps his head back upright. “Oh, no. We’ll have someone out for you at midnight. Don’t tell anyone about us-”

“You can’t just come and take me in today? Like, right now? I’m already tired as fuck from sleeping on the streets.” I blinked at my own sudden irritation and aggression.

That got an audible huff out of him. “Prudence, woman. Discretion is important to us, and to our craft.”

“Hmmmh. Well, great. We’ll see if I can even stand straight by then.” I frowned, deeper than I meant to, looking around briefly. The man in turn merely nods his head and heads back in. I could look around some more, but I certainly couldn’t afford to go to far, as to avoid the risk of not being able to make it back in time.

All the same, I decided to walk down the nearby alleys, if only to get a better feel for the layout. I passed by various graffiti, drifters sitting by the walls, and dumpsters. It’s clear this was not a very nice part of town, but that church all the same had been unfettered by the usual products of hoodlums with spray paint. It’d almost be suspicious, if one were looking very specifically for a coincidence to turn into a conspiracy.

I kept walking, moving along and down the paths, trying to chart the layouts in my head, using the old church as my reference point. I noticed restaurants, pretty fancy-looking ones at that, with sophisticated decoration and menu papers encased in fabric and transparent plastic. I’d have to start considering dumpster diving if my food situation didn’t get any better. I shudder silently as I think of thrusting my hands into a sea of chicken bones, half-eaten burgers, and mixed condiments already contaminated by others’ mouths just to hope on finding one untouched to-go box containing a few already cold fried mozzarella sticks. Plus, I’d have to time my plays for their dump times, to ensure getting something that wasn’t already molding over.

Ugh. Enough thinking of eating table scraps like a literal dog. I move on, settling for a slightly more populated road with a busker armed with an acoustic guitar by the sidewalk, the guitar case open and ready for spare change. I don’t really recognize the tune, but it’s reasonably competent—not that my ears could tell the difference, anyway. I briefly peek over at the interior of the case. It was bordered with some variety of soft, almost velvet-like material, and had a bit more change in it than I’d expected. Perhaps appreciation of music in this place wasn’t so dead after all.

I listened to the music, as I stood at a corner between the larger road and an alley. Something about it was… almost peaceful, a neutral and steady tune. I allow myself to close my eyes and open the ears atop my head, to better take in the atmosphere.

A breath in, a breath out. I am in a forest, though the trees above are not thick enough to fully thwart the falling rain, which feels little more than a drizzle right now. The leaves of the trees are there, but not overbearing, ever green against what is honestly a pretty cloudy sky. I focus a little, and I feel a heat behind me.

A breath in, a breath out. I rotate my head just enough to look behind me. A campfire, standing proud, flames ever bright, but slowly being worn out by whatever rain slips in between the leaves. Turning back, I feel the warmth fading slightly. A few minutes pass, and it’s suddenly getting frighteningly cold in this forest. It isn’t even snowing, so I can only assume I’ve underestimated the cold rain coming in. It is pretty wet, after all.

A breath in, a breath out. Hold. A crackling from behind me, and I’m not so sure its distance matches the fire’s.

Wait. The ‘crackling’ is rhythmic, patterned unlike the logs of a bonfire slowly breaking down.

Wait, because the noises are getting closer.

Wait. A spine chill; the sound of a knife unfolding, the sounds getting closer.

Ready, it’s close, and I can wait no more, because if I wait any longer oblivion itself will take me—

Strike. I don’t know how I stayed in the trance as long as I did, with imminent danger so close behind, but while I slipped out of my daydream my mental trance held for just a second more as I pivoted on my right foot, ducked, and sent my elbow out like a pike awaiting a charge, striking the hoodlum’s stomach dead-on, sending him back a few steps as his off-hand sailed overhead, seizing nothing but empty air. I then draw back two steps and pull my katana from its scabbard, held high, ready for his next advance.

I got a nice look at his knife; if I had to guess, it’s one of those spring-assisted ones, standard pocketknife length— concealable, yet intimidating in the right circumstances. He growled, coughing, before shouting and running at me again. At first I had taken him for a rational kind of mugger, but I can’t think of anyone that would rationally run forward in a case like this, much less a criminal. Is he pissed that he missed the fact that I was armed? Is he mad because I was more alert than I let on, and cheated him out of an easy theft? Or, perhaps, it was because I’m a woman, and yet still kicking his ass. Most of the males at the school I was at were the exact same way, until they got used to me and my sister simply being excellent swordfighters on merit alone. Regardless, he wasn’t getting a free pass.

I set my point ahead of myself, right in his way, hoping, waiting for him to realize the danger and piss off, or just run himself into my point nicely, freak out, and pass out from shock. As it turns out, this guy really is goddamn crazy, because he rammed himself right into the point, having his lung skewered neatly, and kept running down the weapon like a boar, swinging wide with his knife as he slid deep into my sword. I duck and go left, as I feel the knife take a neat swipe at my cheek before I rip the sword out, flinging stray, blackened blood to the concrete as he stumbled to a stop, wheezing, but still having the nerve to turn around and… wait.

He was still standing, though clearly inconvenienced from the way his off hand grabbed his wound, but how is he still standing? Is he on some super-drug? Is he even remotely human?

My thoughts had rattled around long enough; I had just figured out he was aiming for my neck at the last pass, and one thought bled through the smoke of a mind rattled by adrenaline; this needs to end, now. I felt my tail stick out in my coat involuntarily, straight up, as I held my sword high. This man now seemed less man than machine (here he comes)…

And the only way to stop a machine (he raises his knife and he moves in)…

Is to make it physically impossible for it to function. So, I aimed for his knife, and without another thought, I watch the blade tear into his hand as he screeches, dropping the knife, howling like a stuck animal. I finally witness that I split his hand in half right down the middle, the halves dangling slightly like a fleshy banana’s peel. His knife’s handle was the main thing stopping it from going deeper, though all the blood and twitching is already hideous. Before I could think more about it, he runs back into the alley. He’ll probably bleed out, but that’s not particularly consequential to my current situation.

It was only now that the guitarist thought to stop playing and looked over, and then… he shrugged. What, did he think this was a fucking act? Or was psychotic muggers getting cut down violently just a given in this place? I flick the blood off my sword, before wiping it and letting it back into its scabbard. Then, I pick up the knife. I’d guess it was of middling quality, standard clip point, textured plastic handle, though it now has a deep notch in the handle. It’s fairly slick with blood, so I make a point of wiping it off before pocketing it. Maybe it could be useful in piecing together some information on who attacked me.

I bring a hand to my cheek; it’s still bleeding, but it mostly closed itself up pretty fast. Still, it’s a bit of a mess, so I head into the building behind the guitarist. It looks like some sort of shop, selling odd substances in jars and tubes-essential oils turned up to eleven? I don’t feel I have the time to look closer, so I make my way to the bathroom and wash the blood off my face. I get a glimpse of what’s left: A mark that should soon fade. I leave the bathroom and exit the building, and move on to exploring more of the immediate area, wandering alleys and streets.