Jin Sakai x F!Reader

Twelve

Tension made Jin's finger curl as he watched from afar how Lord Adachi stopped at the beach, right in front of a line of mongols.

Dark leather and silver armour shimmered in the golden light of torches. Smoke filled the air, almost as if the intruders had plans to set something ablaze.

Or someone.

With narrowed eyes he leaned forward in his saddle, trying to catch a better glimpse of what was going on down there.

Lord Adachi had just gotten his feet back to the ground. The Mongols didn't attack him, not yet at least. It seemed they were eager to find out what the samurai had to propose.

Their rows split and a man appeared, larger, hunkier than the rest of his men. Something tugged in the back of Jin's mind, a deep primal instinct that appeared whenever someone like this was too close.

He pushed it into the back of his mind, closed his eyes and levelled his breathing. Patience and peace of mind were the key to winning.

He couldn't afford to be afraid. Not this night.

As his eyes opened again they were met with a flame. It was large, human sized. Screams of a dying man accompanied it.

The air tasted like thunder. Rain fell.

But all Jin could do was stare at the spectacle down at the beach. The Mongols, or rather their Kahn, had set Lord Adachi on fire.

Alive.

They watched as he screamed for his life and tried to throw himself to the ground to suffocate the fire in the sand.

His horse panicked at the sight, jumped back and neighed, eyes wide open. One of the mongol soldiers grabbed it by the reins while another drew his weapon.

On heavy cut and blood soaked into the sand. The horse fell to the side, heavy. Dead.

And just like his companion Lord Adachi was met with the same fate. As he tried to retreat to safety the Kahn grabbed his large spear and made it swing through the air.

It was a clean cut, mighty and yet skilled.

All that Jin could see was how Lord Adachi's helmet slipped off his shoulders. Still attached to his head. However, his head wasn't attached to his body no more.

Silent mutters roamed through the lines of the samurai. Disgust crept up Jin's throat. He had to clench his hands into fists in order to not loose his temper.

The first of the samurai had been slain. And it had been not just any, but a man he had respected greatly.

"Samurai!", the voice of the Kahn seemed to make the dark sky above their heads tremble. "Do you surrender?"

Next to him, lord Shimura calmed his horse. There was no anger on his face but plain disgust, displeasure and judgement for what the general of the interiors had done.

Everything went against the teachings of the samurai, against their believes and views. He hated everything about it.

"Cowards without honour deserve no mercy.", he said, the words dripping like poison from his tongue. "No mercy!"

Jin's hand shot up. This was the sign.

All at once the samurai opened fire, covering the dark night sky with flaming arrows. Like a sea of fireflies they came raining down on the lines of the mongols who had pushed to the very edge of the beach.

Now they were about to set foot onto the island entirely.

Battle cries and screams of bloodlust ripped through the air. His fingers tensed. As soon as they found the handle of his katana they wrapped around it.

A shimmering blade of silver appeared. His own reflection greeted him, determined, willing to sacrifice it all. If he was meant to die on this beach tonight he would do it.

"Charge!", with his own blade raised into the air, his uncle led the attack.

Arrows of fire accompanied their way down as samurai and Mongols crossed their weapons. Steel made steel vibrate.

Horses panicked.

Men yelled.

Jin could hardly count the amount of people that him and the eighty samurai were up against. No matter where he looked, no matter how far down his horse carried him there were Mongols.

They greeted the samurai with balls of fire that rained from the sky. The stench of firepowder was in the air, making it stuffy and unpleasant to breathe in.

Even though this night was a rainy, gloomy one it was warm, almost muggy as Jin finally reached the beach. His horse threw its head into the air, wanted to jump aside.

He lifted his katana, the blade of the clan of Sakai, and cut one mongols head from his shoulders. Blood splattered all over the sand.

The earth below him trembled with every impact.

As he raised his head, already beads of sweat running down his temples, a shiver chased through his body. Even though the beach was infested with these barbaric intruders it wasn't the land that possessed the biggest threat.

It was the sea.

The fleet of the Mongols was armed with canons that shot some kind of fire magic he had never seen before. If one of these ships would run out of supplies there would be ten more to take its place.

Their might was so overwhelming that it even managed to make the sand below Nobu's hooves burn. Small shards of glass shimmered between blood and bodies.

An unbearable stench of raw flesh and iron filled his nose. Jin sucked in a sharp breath, closed his eyes and forced the doubts back down his throat.

This was like nothing he had ever seen before in his thirty years of life.

Another man fell to the stroke of his blade. Another lost a hand. He could feel the wetness of blood covering his fingers, tasted it on his lips.

The chest plate of his armour was stained all over already and he hadn't even started yet. There were still so many mongols, so many enemies to kill.

Screams of war deafened his ears while fire rained from the sky. Nobu let out a long, unsettling breath.

Jin's eyes jumped up to the sky. And in this very moment a wave of fire rained down on him, lighting up the deep brown of his eyes.

His heart stopped.