With concentration, a ninja from the Clan of Dusk’s Embrace can stop their own heart. There, at the border between life and death, dark secrets are laid bare that only a ninja that has tasted death can know. The ninja returns from that journey changed in ways few can comprehend. For most ninja, their true powers lie in deception, subterfuge and illusion. But for a Dusk Ninja, illusion is unnecessary; the impossible becomes reality.
Cold stone walls and hard black dirt. No windows. Only a door, with the slimmest shaft of light playing along the bottom. The light slid across the black dirt and died at the ninja’s feet.
His wrists were bound in heavy iron links. His legs were chained to the chair he sat in. Another chain joined the two, and that chain was fastened to the chair. He had been here in the darkness for hours. The shaft of light wavered sometimes, but never slid closer to his feet. It was not sunlight. He was being held somewhere sun had no business intruding.
The ninja drifted in and out of sleep. Sweat soaked into his clothes, darkening them. He blinked salt from his eyes a number of times. He waited. The iron at his wrists and ankles alternated between feeling as heavy as an oak and as light as a sigh. They believed it could hold him.
When the door opened, the light from beyond the door pierced his eyes and turned the world into a haze. He squinted and saw three shapes move into view. He recognized the shape of samurai before his eyes could focus. Two of them—trimmed in full silver armor from head to toe, their faces concealed behond gleaming silver pageantry—stepped to either side of the open door, their hands at their blades.
A third samurai walked in, armor as red as a dying moon. Behind a mask of grinning bone, the ninja saw hard, black eyes sizing him up.
“Ninja,” the samurai said. “What manner of ninja allows himself to be captured?”
The ninja said nothing.
“What clan are you from?” Asked the samurai.
The ninja looked past him, into the open area beyond.
“Bring in the light and shut the door,” the samurai barked. One of the silver clad warriors retreated, returning with a flickering torch that he slotted into the wall. Then the door shut with a thud.
The torch illuminated the room, throwing dancing shadows across the stone walls. Moss grew in the corners where light refused to settle. A roach the size of a child’s hand skittered up the wall and found a hiding place where hope died. “It’s only us here now. Nobody to save you. What clan do you claim?”
Again, the ninja said nothing.
One of the silver-clad samurai moved forward, tugging his blade from it’s home, but the red-armored leader held out a hand.
“I don’t expect an answer. At least, not now. But when his belly aches for food, when his throat sticks to itself in need of water, then he will answer.”
“I will answer now,” the ninja said. His voice was raspy, but he refused to let it waver.
“Indeed? Tell me.”
“I am of the Clan of Dusk’s Embrace. I have been to the edge. I have seen beyond the limitations of blade, bone and bonds. And I have a secret I wish to share with you.”
The samurai leaned in closer, the ghoul’s grin on his mask seeming to stretch wider. “And what is that secret, ninja?”
“I know that I am not alone.”
As if sensing the meaning behind his words, the red-armored samurai was already whipping around. There was a small sound that went fwooshfwoosh as the heads of the twin silver samurais fell one-two in neat procession. Behind him, in the closed-off room, a second ninja was already bringing his blade around for a third strike as the heads hit the hard black soil. His downward slice was stopped short by the samurai’s already drawn blade.
The bodies of the shining samurai’s bodies tumbled like neglected dolls. The bound ninja sprung forth, the chains dropping away from his ankles and wrists as if they were weeds, and grabbed a sword from a falling samurai before his body collapsed to the ground.
The red samurai’s speed was incredible. Sparks spit off his blade as he deflected a thrust with one hand, and yanked his wakazashi out to still the attack aimed at his throat.
Despite the confined space and the bulk of his armor, the samurai held his own against the ninja. A quick swipe of a blade and the torch was put out, leaving them in darkness. The ninja heard a gasp and then silence.
It’s just us, now,” the samurai said.
“You are skilled,” the ninja said. “You move like…”
“Like what? Someone familiar?” the door opened, illuminating the samurai. His blade was as red as his armor now. At his feet lay the ninja’s clansman, a diagonal slash smiling across his chest.
The samurai tugged his mask off and tossed it at the ninja’s feet. “Maybe this will refresh your memory.”
The ninja looked up at the familiar face. “Master…”
“No longer,” the old ninja master said. “No more. I was betrayed by ninja. What I built is gone. Broken. Nothing remains of it but puppetry and nonsense.” He slung the blood from his blade; it spattered to the floor like demon’s spittle.
“Now then, little ninja…let us talk of secrets and betrayals, and see if we can profit from such conversation.”
With a swift motion, he kicked the door shut; the room was again drenched in shadow.
The ninja gripped his blade in sweating hands as the darkness came to swallow him whole.
Clan of Dusk’s Embrace is now available on the Articulated Icons store!
