Romance of the Four Kingdoms

Chapter 12

Mitsuko limps her way towards Si Shui Gate despite her small injury. It causes her pain each time she plants her foot in the ground however she felt that she was strong enough to continue. When she arrived at the gate she saw that the gate has been absolutely thrashed. She sighed in frustration, the alliance army was out of her grasp yet again. They even had a battle to win as evidence by the recent corpses surrounding her and yet she was still too slow to catch up to them. She looks and notices a small doorway indented in the gate which more than likely lead upstairs to the top of the gate. She walked up the steps to see the state of it and she saw even more corpses mainly men in imperial uniforms armed with bows while also having a sword equipped with them. It must've been some fight she missed if it was this messy.

She looks up at the sky and notices how dark it was actually getting. She decided to go back down the stairs but stay in the middle of them as they veer from going straight up to the right leaving a large step big enough to lie down on. She wanted to be warm for the night seeing as the steps are imbedded inside the gate house. The next morning she got up and as she got on her feet she realised that her pain from her recent injury didn't exist anymore. She wondered why so she put her fingers over the wound but instead of anticipating a stinging sensation she instead felt something quite hard. She stroked it to get a feel and it felt...scaly? She looks down and sees that instead in the place of the wound there is a small line of scale like it was acting as a blood cot to close the wound.

'What the fuck is this!? Am I an actual snake now or something!? I don't know what's going on if I see Dodomeki again I need some answers for this. Well its not like it's a bad thing. I might not know what's going on but I do know I need to press on.' Mitsuko thought to herself as she exits the gatehouse and goes presses on to Hu Lao Gate to meet with the alliance. As she exits she sees the snow still falling. She no longer can see the red patches of snow around the corpses and some of them were buried in the pure white blanket.

She travelled down the road where the alliance marched as she can barely see the footprints that were freshly made as snow started to cling on her clothes. She travels for about half a day before she decides to stop for a rest in a small abandoned hut she found keeping herself warm in the snow. As she was resting she hears heavy footsteps...almost too heavy to be a person. They stop as Mitsuko's grasps her weapon tightly. She suddenly hears the sound of snow being landed on. She guesses someone that someone dismounted a horse but why are they here? She thinks to herself as the thought of another assassin trying to kill her briefly enter her mind. She was cautious as she crawls out the back of the tent creating some distance between herself and the footsteps as they drew closer and closer to the tent. She stands up a she exits and extends her scythe to the individual who was about to enter the tent.

'Don't move and drop your weapon...now!' She demanded. The individual complied as Mitsuko hears the snow catching the weapon on the ground.

'Step out and tell me who you are.' The individual complied as he backs out of the tent and stands up. The man in question dressed in all black but the clothing looks very light offering more manoeuvrability than protection. He covers most of his face with a black bandana however from the looks of the remains of himself he seems quite young around his mid 20s. Mitsuko's left eye began to flicker between her normal bright emerald colour to a dark violet for a few seconds before remaining her normal emerald. During that time the figure in front of her seems familiar to Mitsuko but she didn't remember why.

'Do I know you from somewhere before?'

'Did you really forget about me? I'm hurt my lady.' He chuckled. His voice is soft yet relaxed. Something about him was strikingly familiar and yet nothing came to mind for Mitsuko.