In Company of the Sage

The Empire, Long United, Must Divide.
So sayeth the ancient proverb, words which resonate more than ever in this age of chaos.

In the Seventh year of the Sonwa (尊和) era, Ka (華), the great empire whose hegemony stretched far beyond the continent in which it ruled supreme, had long since imploded.

Corruption. Natural disasters. Military defeats. The personal ambitions of powerful individuals. All these factors contributed to the shattering of the empire, and, amidst its innumerable fragments, hundreds of realms emerged. Each vied for power, soaking the soil in the blood of their adversaries on their path to what they believed to be greatness.
War banners waved amidst seas of fire, blades clashed with each other, and the air reeked of the smell of rot and gunpowder.

By the Seventh year of the Sonwa era, only twenty-seven realms remained.
Those without ambition, power, or skill found themselves crushed and destroyed by the world around them or simply cast aside by the flow of history.

In time, these realms too will be wiped from the face of the earth, replaced with something new. Something to break the cycle of violence.

For, as the ancient proverbs also say, The Empire, Long Divided, Must Unite.

Yet, for the two individuals who eventually came to lead the path towards a new era, their thoughts could be effectively summarized in five words.

“I want to go home.”

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In a backwater village on the outskirts of Hairyu (沛龍) county, the flames of an open fire lit the inside of a run-down hut, illuminating its mud-brick walls and doing as best a job as possible of keeping the freezing cold outside at bay.
Snow lightly tapped on the wooden door and window shutters as the occupant of the shack curled up alongside the fire.

The young boy, his hair as dark as the night outside and his blue eyes contrasting with the firelight reflecting off it, rubbed his eyes as he skimmed through the book in his hands for the umpteenth time.

Though some pages, worn out after years of use, seemed barely legible to the average reader, this mattered little for the boy.

He read this book before. All the books in the shack that he called his home, he read before. Many times. Many, many times. Books made of paper, short notes written on cloth rags, old scrolls still made from bamboo strips, all of them.

The boy sighed before closing the book.

A lone horseman struggled along the snow-covered road.

The man wore only a cuirass of lamellar armor atop his blood-soaked, noble robes, out of which a number of arrows, some broken, stuck out from his back like spines on a porcupine.
As the horse stopped in its tracks, the man slipped off the saddle, unwittingly taking his young passenger with him. The snow cushioned the fall of both, but the snow also slowly became dyed red.

The horseman’s passenger, a young girl, tried to coax the man into getting back on his feet, but the man simply pushed her away.

So, the girl walked. Wrapped in a mix of middle-class silk and straw winter clothing, an ornate sword hanging at her hip, she kept walking, one bloody footstep at a time.

But alas, eventually, she could walk no more.

Letting out a cough, the girl collapsed onto the snowy ground, barely registering the sound of footsteps heading towards her.

Her pursuers, perhaps?
No, the sounds came from the wrong direction. Then, perhaps, locals? Maybe even bandits?

The girl desperately tried to get back on her feet, but to no avail. The will was certainly present, but the body clearly lacked any strength to keep up.

With one last sigh, the girl closed her eyes as everything sank into darkness.

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“Ren. Oi, Ren! You listening?”

Ren (蓮) looked up from his book, his blue eyes reflecting the person standing beside him. Tall, swarthy, and slinging a trio of rabbits over his shoulder, the slightly older boy sighed as Ren put his book down.

“Sorry Zen-u. You were saying?”

The older boy, Zen-u (善雲), simply shook his head as he sat down next to Ren, setting aside the rabbits and his quiver of arrows as he did so.

“I was saying that things at the county castle aren’t looking good, just like you said,” said he. “The governor just announced he was gonna start rationing rice and barley. Even said the rationing’ll apply to himself too.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yep.”

With a light sigh, Ren got up from his chair and stretched his arms.

“Still, that’s a better decision than what some other governors would make,” said he, brushing the dust off the book he had been reading as he did so. “It’s acknowledging the situation and presenting an appropriate countermeasure at the same time, even if it is only a stopgap.”

Ren then shifted his gaze.

“…right Mina?”

The girl at the other end of Ren’s gaze, Mina (美奈), simply nodded as she perused through a different book, flicking an abacus about as she did so.

“Grain imports are down by two-tenths compared to last month,” Mina stated. “Again.”

“And domestic?” Ren asked.

“Slightly up, thanks to some refugee labor, but not by much,” Mina replied. “Soil’s not right. Not even Teacher’s crop rotation system can compensate.”

“What about Teacher’s crops?” asked Zen-u. “They do well here.”

At this, Mina rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, they have,” said she. “But we can’t feed the whole county, can we?”

As Mina and Zen-u began a light-hearted argument, Ren sighed once more before taking a look at his surroundings.

Numerous mud-brick huts, around twenty or so, set in neat, organized rows and columns, filled the clearing in the woods down below. Smoke rose from many of the huts’ chimneys and, even from where Ren stood, the sounds of men and women chatting, blacksmiths forging iron, all drifted into Ren’s ears, albeit barely.

(If only Teacher could see this now…) Ren thought, glancing down at the worn book in his hand as he did so.

He sighed. How many times he had sighed up to this point, he did not know, nor could he care less, but eventually Zen-u called Ren’s attention back to the material world.

“By the way, Ren, how’s the girl you picked up doing?” he asked. “Still sleeping?”

Ren rolled his eyes.

“Phrasing, Zen-u,” said he. “Also, yes. She’s still sleeping. Ranka’s looking after her right now.”

An unfamiliar ceiling greeted the young girl as she slowly opened her eyes. Pain stung at her limbs and muscles all over her body ached, but one thing seemed clear; she was alive.
Attempting to sit her body up proved futile as her aching muscles refused to listen to her brain’s commands, causing her to collapse back onto the straw mattress she had been sleeping upon.

Just then, the door to the hut opened and in walked in another girl, around the same age, carefully carrying a bowl of what looked like gruel with her.

She nearly spilt the food upon seeing her patient awake and struggling to get out of bed.

“Ranka, how is she?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

Ren sighed as he watched Ranka (蘭華) browsing through her collection of medical herbs, her brown hair fluttering lightly in the occasional breeze that went through the shed they were in.

“I meant medically,” Ren clarified. “The sooner that Princess can leave our village, the better.”

“Then why did you save her in the first place?” Ranka countered, to which Ren simply remained silent.

Ranka chuckled at this.

“She’ll need at least a week to be even able to walk properly again,” she reported, “let alone travel far.”

“A week…” Ren muttered.

Just as he did, Ranka casually walked up to Ren and gently flicked his ear, stopping him just before he found himself deep in thought again.

“Before you start planning anything,” said Ranka, “talk to the girl whose life you probably saved. She deserves at least some say in all this.”

Once more, Ren let out a sigh of annoyance before walking towards the hut next door.

He hesitated, just for a moment, before swiftly knocking on the door twice.

“…Yes?”

A girl’s voice answered. She sounded slightly anxious and uncertain, but a degree of determination also seemed laced in. For someone who only recently woke up after being bedridden for two days, she seemed quite energetic.

Once more, Ren hesitated.

Judging from the girl’s possessions, especially her sword, Ren figured her to be a person of high birth, or someone working or living in close proximity to one. It stood to reason that she might expect those around her to behave with manners.

But, assuming these manners were courtly manners, how must Ren behave?
All the books he read taught him little regarding this subject matter. Teacher also neglected to touch on the subject too, though that might be because Teacher disliked the formality of the Royal Courts of the world in the first place.

Suddenly, after a brief sigh, from Ranka beside him, Ranka forcefully pushed Ren through the door, causing him to stumble into the hut. After regaining his balance, Ren shifted his gaze to his right.

Ren’s pair of blue eyes met a pair of red ones.

The girl, still reclining atop the straw mattress with a confused expression on her face, wore a patched-up peasant’s robe in lieu of her original silk one. Her hair, white as the snow Ren found her in, seemed to glow in the sunlight leaking in from the window. Even from over the robes, her lean and tall figure stood out.

Ren failed to notice when he first rescued her from the snow, but he needed only one word to describe the girl before him: beautiful.

Not that he would ever say it out loud, of course, especially in this particular context.

“Sorry about that,” Ranka said as she too stepped into the hut, “I brought you some tea. Should help with getting some energy back.”

Ranka, a jug of water and a handful of herbs in hands, walked towards the other side of the hut.

“Oh, by the way,” said she. “This is Ren. He’s the one that I told you about.”

At this, the girl’s eyes widened as she shifted her gaze from Ranka back to Ren.

“Think of Ren as the chief of this village,” Ranka continued, “If you need anything, you can ask him.”

Ren, regaining his bearings by this point, groaned in annoyance at Ranka’s comment.

At this, Ranka chuckled.

“Right, I’ll leave you two be then,” she said as she headed for the door. “Oh, don’t worry, Ren won’t do anything to you. He doesn’t have the guts.”

With that, she exited the hut and shut the door behind her, leaving Ren and the albino-looking girl alone together.

Sighing, Ren brought a nearby stool closer and sat down.

An awkward silence fell upon them soon after.

“…um.”

The girl broke the silence first.

“I was told you saved me from the snow,” said she. “I thank you for that, but why did you do it?”

Ren could feel the caution in the girl’s voice.

Ren, again, sighed.

“… Do I need a reason to save someone?”

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The girl introduced herself as Gin (銀), and confirmed she indeed came from a noble family, but offered no other details.
Ren made no effort to pressure her; she clearly came as a political refugee of some kind and not knowing her true identity may help in keeping her out of prying eyes, and, by extension, keep the village safe.

Three days passed and Gin, though needing a cane, soon regained the ability to walk on her own.

She toured the village, its fields, its workshops, all at the side of Ren as he guided her around.

After the tour, the two returned to the hut serving as Ranka’s clinic.

“Ren,” Gin asked. “You told me this village only came into existence roughly five years ago? How is the population so large?”

Ren, in the middle of lifting his teacup to his lips, paused, before setting the cup back onto the nearby table.

“…They’re criminals,” he replied.

Seeing Gin tense up at this answer, he stretched his arms a little before leaning back against the mudbrick wall.

“Bandits, Conmen, Pickpockets, Debtors, Runaway Serfs and Slaves, Deserting Soldiers, you name it. There’s probably at least one of them down in the village. But.”

Ren stood up before walking over to the nearby window to look at the view outside.

“They’re not bad people,” said he. “Not anymore, anyway. Everyone in the main village turned to crime at some point because they thought that was the only way they could survive. Once they learn otherwise, they changed.”

“How so?” Gin asked, to which Ren chuckled.

“Peace, of course,” said he, rather sarcastically. “Gives them time to make or farm everything they need. And then some.”

“Peace? In this era of warring states?” Gin said. “No wonder they call this place the ‘Village of the Sage.’”

At this, Ren’s expression turned into confusion.

“The what?”

“The Village of the Sage,” Gin repeated. “That’s how its listed on the few maps that actually record this place at least.”

“…I’m one of the first people to live here,” Ren commented. “But I don’t remember any sage living here.”

“You sure?” said Gin. “No memory of a sage, capable of otherworldly magic or anything similar?”

Ren paused, thought for a moment, then sighed.

“Oh…” he muttered. “Must be talking about Teacher.”

Ren then stood up and offered his hand to Gin

“Want to meet him?”

In front of Ren stood a solitary gravestone.

Shaped like that of a tall temple building atop a pedestal, moss covered the roof portion, but the rest of the stone remained clean and well maintained. Letters or Characters of seemingly otherworldly origin engraved themselves into the face of the gravestone.

“Teacher taught us everything,” Ren explained, kneeling in front of the gravestone as he did so. “Reading, writing, farming, philosophy, everything. Never told us where he came from, though.”

Ren, noticing some dirt on the pedestal, gently patted the dirt off before continuing.

He always said he dreamed of a world no-one had to kill each other just to survive. He made that a reality, here in this village at least.”

Ren stood back up.

“We always debated why the world is the way it is today,” said he. “Even now, I don't think there’s a correct answer.”

Gin, her gaze alternating between the gravestone and Ren up to this point, sighed before shifting her gaze to the rest of the village.

“...Did you ever think to change it?” she softly asked. “The world, I mean.”

Ren narrowed his eyes.
He saw a determination in the girl’s eyes, now burning fiercer than before.
He knew where this conversation was going.

“...I assume you do,” Ren mused, to which Gin chuckled and returned to facing Ren.

“Everyone either accepts that the world is broken, or is trying to fix it,” said Gin. “I want to build something new.”

“You and who’s army?” Ren said. “Ideals and willpower will only get you so far.”

At this, Gin remained silent.

Her determination, as far as Ren could tell, remained unchanged. Something else, however, seemed to waver at Ren’s statement.

Ren instinctively opened his mouth.
What did he want to say? An apology? Advice?

Ren, with a sigh, closed his mouth before looking away.

(...What right do I have) he thought. (All I want is to forget about the world and...)

The sound of distant hooves interrupted his thoughts.

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“Zen-u, what’s going on?”

Ren hurried towards the center of the main village, where Zen-u and others gathered.

“Cavalry,” Zen-u replied. “About a hundred of ‘em.”

“Flags?”

“None. Looked well equipped though. Doubt they’re bandits.”

Silence fell upon them as Ren pondered his options.

“Think they’re after the Princess?” Zen-u asked.

“Probably,” Ren replied. “Question is, what for?”

Ren took a quick glance at Gin, who seemed to take the hint and, with the assistance of Ranka, quickly hid in a nearby hut.

“Guess we have to improvise, as usual,” Ren muttered. “Mina, tell everyone to act normally, but stay on alert.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Zen-u, get your fellow hunters in the woods. If anything happens, we need to end it quick.”

“Got ya. Rifles! On me!”

As the group scattered to work on their respective tasks, Ren simply sighed.

The first of the armored horsemen stopped just in front of the entrance to the main village.

All wore complete sets of black lamellar armor, all well-made and well maintained, excluding the occasional unrepaired bits of battle damage. Some carried spears, but most carried swords at their sides. A few even wore helmets as well.

“Well hello, good sirs. What can I do for you?”

Ren shuffled forward, sporting a nervous smile and massaging his hands before him like some kind of shady merchant.

The lead horseman, presumably the commander of this cavalry force, scoffed at Ren’s behavior before dismounting from his horse.

“We are looking for an albino woman, whom we heard had been heading to this place,” said he as he walked towards Ren. “Hand her over.”

Ren maintained his nervous smile, but mentally sighed.

(Why am I not surprised?) he thought.

“An albino woman?” Ren asked, in as annoying of a voice as possible. “Strange. I’m certain I would remember if I saw such a person. Can you tell us why you inquire for this woman?”

One of the cavalry commander’s eyebrows twitched.

“That is none of your business,” said he. “Now do as you are told, lowborn, or there will be consequences.”

Ren felt something snap.

Perhaps everyone else around him noticed too, as the already cold winter air suddenly felt a few degrees cooler.

Ren sighed, dropping his facade as he did so.

“I see,” said he. “... I refuse.”

“What...!?”

Ren corrected his posture before glaring at the commander directly in the eyes.

“You claim to be a nobleman, yet yours is no different, sorry,”

Ren briefly glanced at the huts behind him before correcting himself.

“Even worse than a common bandit.”

Ren took a step forward, closing the distance between himself and the commander.

“You come from asking for a favor, to an unfamiliar place, yet you come here and intimidate us with force of arms and the noble achievements of your ancestors, for which you personally deserve no credit! HAVE YOU NO MANNERS, SIR!?”

The veins in the commander’s head twitched in rage.

“You dare...!?” he exclaimed, before drawing his sword and rushing forward at Ren.

Ren, however, made no effort to get out of the way.

As metal struck metal, a distinct clang reverberated through the village.

Ren worried little about the commander trying to strike him down. Though outside his field of vision, he knew Zen-u already lay in waiting, rifle cocked and ready to shoot through the commander’s arm.

And yet, he widened his eyes in surprise, for he failed to anticipate the scene before him.

Gin, still clothed in peasant robes and wrapped in bandages, stood in front of Ren, parrying the commander’s strike with her own sword, her white hair elegantly flowing in the air as she did so.

The commander, quickly and instinctively, backed away a few paces, preparing for a proper duel, before widening his eyes at Gin.

“...Milady?” he muttered.

Gin adjusted her stance before pointing her sword in the commander’s direction.

“Stand down, General Kai!” she shouted. “You dare threaten and insult the very people who saved my life!?”

The General, Kai Karyo (改 何両), stood still, stunned, at first. He then threw down his weapon onto the ground before throwing himself down onto the ground.

“Not at all!” he exclaimed. “I meant to do no such thing, milady!”

Seeing their general acting in such a manner, the remaining cavalrymen followed suit and dismounted, before kneeling in front of Gin.

Cautious footsteps sounded behind Gin.

“Care to explain what’s going on?” a rather annoyed and tired-looking Ren asked. “Princess?”

Gin scoffed at Ren’s sarcastic comment before turning to face him with an apologetic smile.

“Let me introduce myself properly this time,” said she. “My name is Li Ginshi (李 銀獅), daughter of the Duke of Burin (武林).”

Her expression then brightened a bit.

“Sorry for all the trouble.”

The two knew not yet, but at this very moment, the Princess, who would bring peace to all under heaven atop a wave of revolution, met exactly who she needed to bring that dream to reality: a capable, yet reluctant and often sighing, strategist.