Absolution

There I am, body - hanging from the wall, bleeding like the world is about to end - which for me it is, pinned to that same wall by six swords.

The first two swords through the wrist at angles ensuring that they sever the radial arteries in both arms. The next two, driven through the cuirass of a tempered tamahagane Nanban dō -gusoku each angled inwards to pierce both lungs. The last two from just under the ribs angled upwards and inwards to both pierce the heart.

All six swords had struck with precision, all within the span of time it took for a hummingbird's wings to flap twice. The strike was the culmination of a technique older than my household. It had killed my father, it had killed his father before him, and now it was killing...correction, it had killed me.

So...there I am, sitting - a bloody incorporeal mess, holding onto what is left of my Guan Dao's ethereal form. Watching my now dead body hang there, bleeding out onto the floor of the temple. Hopeless, helpless...

My retainers all around me, crying and mourning for the loss of a leader who had failed them as his father had failed before him.

The sniffles suddenly go silent as the grizzled old emperor walks into the temple, surrounded by his retinue of guards. He pauses as he enters, his wise but ancient eyes taking in the scene before him...

He begins his ritual almost as soon as he begins to move again.

He stops briefly in front of each of the bodies of my fallen men. He makes the same consoling gesture, touching each body on the shoulder, and utters the same words - "it was not your fault, you DID your best."

There is a brief glow around the emperor as he carries out the absolution and moves on to the next body...

He keeps this up until he gets to where I sit, a specter, by my physical body pinned to the wall.

He is tired, the absolution ritual must be hard on him. He looks emotionally and physically spent and yet he looks at my body, the tears forming in his eyes as he acknowledges and accepts my death.

He pauses before my body, his hands held apart - palms facing upwards towards me as if expecting something from me, yet passively signaling that there was nothing more I could've done, then he reaches out with both hands and grabs my shoulders.

He starts to utter the words, then pauses mid-sentence and turns slowly to look at me - the soul, his eyes full of wisdom and regret, as he finishes saying the words, "it was not your fault, YOU did your best".

He stretches out his hand at that point and places one hand on my shoulder gripping it. The tears in my eyes finally begin to fall, as I realize I can feel his hand, and he can feel my shoulder. He grasps it as a father would his son, and he whispers those same words... "it was not your fault, YOU did your best". I look at him, now with understanding - now acknowledging that he CAN see the dead, and accepting that, all those years ago, he held my father's shoulders - whilst I thought he was just pretending to touch the dead.

He turns and looks behind me, the soul of my weapon manifesting in the form of Hachiman the Yahata no kami, a large warrior wearing a Tosei-gusoku and carrying a Guan Dao, and he nods, then turns back to me and whispers, "do not begrudge your opponent. Be at peace".

The warmth starts to fill me, as a bright light surrounds me. I rise to my feet. My weapon's soul fades as it begins to merge with the Guan Dao - the damage it has taken, being undone, and it takes on a more physical form and begins to lose its ethereal form.

The more it takes on a physical form the more difficult it becomes for me to hold on to it, so I let go and the weapon drops to the floor, continuing to repair itself.

I look the emperor in the eyes, I wipe away my tears as he nods to me and I accept, it wasn't my fault, I fought as well as I could, I DID my best...my opponent just happened to be better.

I begin to fade into absolution, and I bow to the emperor.