Kyoku

What do you fight for? This is the question that defined Kyoku’s life. Born late into the Shadowkin rebellion against the Mikage Autocracy, the fight to liberate Yakai from the Mikage’s rule was all she knew. Training of both body and mind began at a young age for her. Teachings of Yakai’s history, its ideology, and its golden period of prosperity and freedom were just as important as any lesson with spear and shield. Their mission was to ‘restore honor to the kingdom’, a phrase that Kyoku recited daily, never sure if she truly believed in it or if she was just doing what she was told and what all her peers did. As the rebellion finally gained momentum, Kyoku led raids, captured strategic locations, and disrupted vital enemy supply lines at the forefront of several of the rebellion’s successes. Their victory became inevitable. Realizing this, many Mikage warlords and administrators burned villages they held to the ground, slaughtered peasants indiscriminately, and salted the soil before fleeing from oncoming rebel forces. Faced with a fractured and vengeful enemy committing acts of terror across the nation as they were consolidating their newly won gains, the rebellion’s leaders knew they could not protect everyone – trying would dangerously overstretch their forces. As reward for her service, Kyoku was placed in charge of a vital strongpoint, tasked with establishing stores, barricades, and watchtowers and maintaining a garrison to cement the rebellion’s hold. What do you fight for? The question ringed in Kyoku’s mind, as her new position forced her to turn a blind eye to the suffering of nearby towns and villages experiencing the wrath of dislodged Demonspawn and their mortal followers. Was this restoring honor? she wondered. When news arrived that Kahino, her home village, had been terrorized by a band of Demonspawn, she decided to look away no longer. Upon arrival at Kahino, Kyoku was greeted with flames and destruction. The sight of burnt out houses, and the once-pristine river overflowing with corpses, hurt Kyoku in a way that no weapon ever had. She found the remaining people hiding in the village’s outskirts, a fierce debate raging between them over whether they should stay or flee. Not wanting to see more people displaced from their homes, Kyoku promised to stay and help fight off the Demonspawn should more come, and so they stayed. As night fell, Kyoku sat alone, sharpening her spear, contemplating whether she had made the right decision abandoning her post. She had little time to ponder however, for Demonspawn did indeed come. Ordering those who could fight to occupy the smaller minions, Kyoku faced down a hulking behemoth with flames curling at the edge of its mouth and wielding a trident dripping with blood. When it charged, the ground shook. Kyoku lifted her shield and rattled under the impact of its first, terrible blow, which threatened to shatter her bones. In return she thrust her spear toward the Demonspawn’s throat. The monster unfurled scaly wings and bat away the strike, and Kyoku withdrew and regrouped. The Demonspawn bore down on her again, raining down a flurry of blows. Kyoku held steadfast behind her shield, though each of her foe’s attacks was vicious and agonizing. As it grew increasingly frustrated by its resolute opponent, the fiend noticed a child cowering under a table. Knocking the table aside, the Demonspawn thrust down its trident to impale the defenseless youth. Kyoku slid her spear between the weapon’s prongs just in time to stop the plunging weapon, then wrenched with all her might to wrest the trident from the Demonspawn’s grasp. With the brute unarmed, Kyoku thrust her spear one final time, burying it so deep in the creature’s neck it burst out the other side. Kyoku attempted to withdraw her weapon but it was firmly stuck, and the Demonspawn used the last of its strength to rake a claw across her face and neck, carving open deep wounds and gouging out an eye. Finally spent, it crashed to the ground in death, blood still gushing from the wound in its neck. Victorious, but exhausted and bleeding, Kyoku collapsed. Having been nursed back to health by the villagers she had nearly died defending, Kyoku awoke to find her wounds tightly bound. She was scarred, but alive. Weeks passed as Kyoku slowly recuperated in Kahino’s idyllic hills, and a new sense of purpose dawned on her. She did not want to ‘restore’ honor to the kingdom, she did not want Yakai to ‘return’ former glories, for she had never experienced them. She instead wanted to build something new, something better, in which people were prized over state. Though that would put her at odds with many of Yakai’s new leaders, she knew now it was what she was fighting for all along.