The Mook Maker

Takeshi was a free man. 

 

Many looked down on him - the man without a Lord to swear allegiance to, without the Clan banner to carry, without the creed, and, as many said, without honour - the merchant, with the ship, was a little better than the pirate. 

 

They looked down at him, but they needed him just the same. The man with the ship was valuable, useful, profitable.

 

The rival clans, forever locked in their endless squabbles, were hungry for the goods he could trade, or steal, for the spoils he could bring from over the seas, to fuel their endless petty schemes, and rarely asked questions. 

 

It worked for men like Takeshi. 

 

Unfortunately, neither Takeshi nor his compatriots were ready for the situation when one of those clans gathered any meaningful authority over others, but it eventually happened. 

 

Clan Tokomura won, established their dominance, and quickly turned against those who fuelled their machinations for all those years, quickly prohibiting the people like Takeshi from ever raiding the foreign shores, or to trade with them, ruining the livelihood of far too many in one broad swoop. 

 

The man with the ship was no longer useful, a free man with the ship was a nuisance at best, and a threat at worst. 

 

At least, that was the case for a couple of years, as very few dared to challenge Clan Tokomura’s dominance, and the edicts they had proclaimed, and they had sworn, and the treaties they had signed, all in exchange for the precious trade privileges with the kingdom across the narrow sea, and supposed new era of unified Gakaiyō. 

 

How they would do so, with the few remaining precious merchant fleets, driven to poverty or piracy, they did not say. 

 

It did not last forever. Nothing does - not the trade agreements, not unified Gakaiyō, and certainly not Tokomura. The ambitious Lords and even their kingdoms do not last forever. Only the gods hold that title.

 

Ambitious clans proved their people were not the unifiers they imagined themselves to be. 

 

Eventually, one of Tokumura’s vassals betrayed the ruling clan, rising against them, and quickly, the others joined, proving how fragile their reign had been, but even then, very few dared to resume the raids, as the war between the rival clans created far too many opportunities for those daring. Those, too, went dry. The clans would promise the plunder to the mercenaries, but until someone gained the upper hand, and crushed their rival, there was very little to loot. 

The men like Takeshi were, once again, needed, and so was their ship. 

 

Very few to no attempts were made to cross the sea, and those who did, they sailed farther away, attempted to trade with the Jin, or, in case of some, steal from them. The Jin were not fond of maritime traders and pirates alike, so very little could be gained there. It was ironic that a lot of the merchants came from the Jin themselves, though it mattered a little. Takeshi was born on the coast of Gakaiyō, yet they looked at him the same as they did at the foreigners. 

 

Some went to trade with the Hanulbeol. 

 

Some succeeded, but most, most were turned away, or had their cargo, and even ships, seized. The Hanulbeol believed in the arrangements they made back in the day, and they were not making concessions - the pirates who turned into merchants, with the precious exceptions, with safe conduct, enjoying briefly the privileges, were called pirates once more. 

 

Takeshi had a ship and a crew that followed him, but very few options 

 

Impoverished peasants didn’t have much to trade and didn’t have much worth stealing, at least on Gakaiyō, and the prospects overseas were equally thin, with far too many risks, and the journeys they made barely kept them alive. The ship itself was considerable property, but was not paying for itself, and there were many more people in similar positions as he was. 

 

This was a difficult time. 

 

Then the sufficiently brave, sufficiently unscrupulous, and sometimes sufficiently privileged, merchants brought the news that Takeshi couldn’t just disregard. 

 

Over the sea, Hanulbeol was collapsing under the Jin onslaught, and its western coast had remained practically undefended, with many riches ripe for the taking, at least until the Jin armies finally got around to claiming all of them, the coastal town too desperate, disorganised, in chaos, as many men had left to fight in the losing war. 

 

It was an opportunity unequalled in recent memory.

 

Takeshi had to act, and so he did - no more would his greatest property, his ship, be wasted, and no more he would risk being handled as a pirate when they followed the will of the long dead lord, to maintain the treaty the now squabbling Clans weren’t able, or willing, to follow. 

 

The time of raiding was back, and it would be glorious. 

 

They left Gakaiyō in haste, to be the first, the most daring, and hopefully, the most rich. 

 

He talked to whoever was willing. 

 

Sixteen ships in all, gathered in a hurry, manned by whoever was skilled, daring, greedy or even desperate enough to go. 

 

The mercenaries that fought under the banners of Yawara Clan came shoulder to shoulder with those who found for their Nedzu enemies, complemented not only by would-be merchants and would-be-pirates but also simple, ordinary fishermen, armed and desperate enough to go. 

 

There was even this one weird monk that was selling good luck charms to sailors who joined the crew. 

 

There were far too many people who yearned for riches, for revenge, for adventure, for change, and all of those dreams would come true through Hanulbeol’s misery. 

 

It wouldn’t be surprising if the richer clans would send their own ships to satisfy their own ambition. May they delay while his party reaped the early rewards!

 

Hanulbeol was a wounded, dying animal, and the wolves were coming. Scavengers would come later. 

 

Maybe, in time, there would be even a war, and Takeshi’s raid wouldn’t be a piracy anymore - it would be bravery in face of the enemy. 

 

After six gruelling days at sea, dry land was finally in sight, and Takeshi was ready to admit that he made mistakes. 

 

Sixteen ships were a lot, an achievement of their own, assembled without the help or approval of the major clan, could carry the crew, the mercenaries, and cargo, but the warships they were not. Barely seaworthy was a more apt description. 

 

Overcome by greed, they rushed to gather a notable fighting force, capable of taking on smaller garrisons the larger towns inherently had, and entirely underestimated the adequate supplies for the trek over the narrow strip of sea that separated them from Hanulbeol.

 

It was just a short voyage. He and his crew were experienced, spent their lives at sea. They couldn’t possibly make a mistake about how much water and how much food they would need. 

 

A mistake. 

 

He and his crew would make the journey with ease, usually. It was just six days, currently in pleasant weather and with favourable winds, and it might have been the easiest voyage he might have sailed. At least, normally. Now this was turning out to be a disaster. 

 

Sixteen ships, filled with mercenaries, brought by promises, were much harder to handle than the single one - the plan to target the larger towns meant more hands to hold the swords, and the more warriors meant more mouths to feed.

 

Maybe they were overly overambitious. 

 

The men were hungry and thirsty. 

 

They lost two ships already - not to the sea, as there wasn’t a single storm cloud in sight - those decided it was not worth the risk, and turned back. Others stayed on course. 

 

Takeshi was certain he would be blamed for this. 

 

He convinced everyone. It wasn’t easy.

 

They would argue about it later. He was certain that many would forget eventually: even the noble lords sometimes forgot about honour when there was something substantial to gain. 

 

Sixteen ships of misfits brought by promises would soon argue over plunder, quickly, to forget how horrible the journey was.

 

It didn’t matter, though; the land was in sight, and they came in on the high tide. There was no other ship in sight, neither some trader’s junk, nor the military one, and he was certain the news of their raid wouldn’t spread too fast. The war with the Jin made travel difficult. 

 

Takeshi’s fleet could easily take some tiny villages, resupply with food, then follow the coast, north or south, to larger ports, which were believed to be undefended. 

 

He would need a better plan once they reassess where they were, but now was the time to prepare for landing. 

 

The shallow coasts wouldn’t be much of a problem. As long as the treacherous waves didn’t carry them against the cliffs, they could find a spot to drop anchor. Any local wharves were likely too shallow for anything beyond the fishing barges, though Takeshi was confident in his light sailing ship, fit for large rivers as well as the sea, to make a landing in the suitable spots. 

 

The commotion on the deck brought the captain back from his planning, as the strange monk they brought onboard for this raid turned suddenly hysteric, screaming, struggling with one of the sailors, and being a general nuisance to Takeshi’s men. 

 

Takeshi rushed forward and swore he would throw the idiot overboard.

 

“No!” the monk screamed, pointing somewhere to the horizon, gesturing wildly towards something that only he could see. “We must turn back!” 

 

The act was so convincing that for a brief moment, Takeshi hesitated, and ran towards the ship’s prow, worried that they were, indeed, heading towards the cliff, but this soon proved to be false. 

 

There was nothing, no cliff, no need to adjust the course, with the land still relatively far away. 

 

He thought there was a settlement there, though the coloured patched at the horizon suggested it looked much more like the terraced fields more than anything else, though the strange off-putting shades of green puzzled him. 

 

What crops had they grown there? 

 

Maybe it was abandoned, and then nature’s overgrowth took over? 

 

It didn’t matter. They could furl sails and let the tide carry them towards the coast. They might rely on oars rather than sails, but it was doable. 

 

“We can’t land there!” The monk screamed, but from what Takeshi saw with his own eyes, it wasn’t simply true. In the worst-case scenario, they would find the abandoned cove to land, and forage, and find water, before they carry on with the looking for settlements for raid.

 

 “I sense … the great evil! A coming storm…” 

 

There were no clouds on the horizon, either. 

 

“Like thousands of voices, screaming of hate in unison! We are going to die!” 

 

The monk screamed, and the captain wasn’t certain why he let that man aboard. 

 

Maybe it was the good luck charms he had sold. 

 

Such things, perhaps not the charms themselves but the faith they inspired, were necessary when men like Takeshi tried to buy services with words and promises, and maybe they indeed brought them good fortune. 

 

After all, it was a smooth sailing, all the way there, as much as Takeshi underestimated the provisions. Sixteen ships were sixteen ships. Reduced to fourteen since they left Gakaiyō because their crews didn’t believe they would make it, proving faith was a currency of their own. 

 

The luck-charm peddler - maybe not even the real monk - was overstaying his welcome. At least it wasn’t an assassin in disguise, since those were not only cunning, but considerably more collected, not to mention dangerous. 

 

This monk was not any of those things. He was insane, Takeshi decided. Mad, stupid, and most likely, a pretender, but still, in his obnoxiousness, he made the crew nervous. 

 

“Turn back! No! We can’t land there! There is great evil ahead!” 

 

Screaming monk - real, or not - was getting on Takeshi's nerves, even if no one else paid him any mind at the moment. They would have to roll the sails soon, closer to the coast, and manoeuvre around the cliffs to find the safe spots to land.  

 

“Shut up, you fool!” 

 

Takeshi rushed to wrestle the rope from the hand of the monk, now desperately trying to hang the tack line of the mainsail, which was equally stupid as it was dangerous 

 

There was no time for this.

 

“We can’t land there! We must turn back! We are all going to die.” 

 

The fool let the rope go and tried to grab Takeshi. 

 

Enough! 

 

With a few well-aimed punches, he knocked the monk down on the deck, and was seriously tempted to drag and throw the nuisance overboard, to the waves beating against the hull as the coast became closer, larger. 

 

Takeshi turned towards the coast. It was about time. 

 

“Prepare …” 

 

He was about to shout an order, but his words were interrupted with the sudden, a more panicked scream came, this time from the stern, not from the troublemaker he just knocked down. Another distraction, another problem.

 

With the groaning of the wood, the rudder moved, the ship leaned on the starboard a little as it suddenly changed direction against the protesting waves, only the relative calmness of the sea prevented the ship from simply rolling. They were shouting, a sudden splash of water, as something, or someone, fell overboard.

 

Takeshi cursed. 

 

“Hold that steady…” 

 

He yelled, quickly turned around, his hand raised, pointing, then froze. 

 

The helm was unmanned, flying wildly, the men who were supposed to man it - normally four - writhed on the ground, in pain, almost as struck by the unexplainable sickness, a fever, not having the strength to steer the ship. They scratched their eyes, moaning, as the ship skipped another wave, shaking the board. 

 

Those who would step in, hesitated, made a step back, 

 

There was a woman who shouldn’t be there. 

 

It - she - made Takeshi pause. 

 

The woman in a colourful dress, looking down at the man crawling away from her, like she was some vengeful ghost that came to haunt them in the broad daylight, and even against better judgement, even against the ship swinging on the tide and the shouts from the other ships carried by the wind. No one dared to move. 

 

Takeshi knew he should move, but suddenly, he couldn’t. 

 

His mind, suddenly dazzled, couldn’t comprehend how she could get aboard, refused to handle the situation he should have. His thoughts caught in this tangent. 

 

Not all sailors were men, it was true: When the fisherman died; it was his wife who inherited the boat. So women knowing how to handle the ship weren’t impossible to find. There certainly were few on other ships, but yet … 

 

The one he saw wasn’t any fisher’s wife. 

 

She somehow doesn’t even seem real, not as real as Takeshi, or his men, were real, but like something which couldn’t, or shouldn’t, exist, forcing the normally sharp mind to wonder whether he, himself, wasn’t going mad from the stifling late summer heat, seeing things. 

 

The men, once fully dedicated for their tasks, were too in shock. Many just watched, a few even reached for those accursed luck charms, even if what they were supposed to be doing was steading the ship. 

 

The wood of the ship groaned, and waves crashed around. 

 

Somewhere in the distance, the other ships tried to change course, to prevent the collision, perhaps sensing something was amiss, even if they didn’t see what those here were seeing. 

 

Takeshi experienced a paralysing feeling as he stood frozen in place, despite his years of experience, and did nothing. 

 

She had a slender, small body and wore a vibrant robe in the Hanulbeol style, which was usually worn by wealthy men's wives to display their riches. However, her presence seemed out of place and emitted an unsettling feeling of discomfort, of pure wrongness. 

 

Several men were on the lookout for weapons. Others simply gazed, mimicking their captain, who finally reached for his sword. 

 

How did she even get aboard? 

 

“This one wants to talk with you about god,” the woman in the dress said, in the language of Hanulbeol, her voice young, innocent, deceiving, and yet still audible amongst all the commotion. 

 

Takeshi understood the language - it was useful to know in his voyages, for many reasons, though his men likely did not - it was he who did the talking, but now, now he could not act, unable to speak, almost as the very blood in his veins mutinied against him. 

 

The annoying monk, even with his nose broken, blood dripping from his face, moaned, yet still managed to yap something about the demons lurking ahead, threw his useless trinkets around. One charm hit the strange female figure. 

 

She shook, almost like something unpleasant splashed her immaculate robes, and the captain’s mind was suddenly back in focus, no longer mesmerised by the sight. 

 

The monk gave up on collecting his lucky pieces and grabbed Takeshi's leg instead. 

 

“We must turn the ship! They will come!” 

 

Takeshi kicked the idiot as the rage took over. 

 

“My god offers you to submit to him peacefully. He has many gifts for those who follow…” the spectre announced, 

 

At the same time, one of his sailors, previously holding to the railings, got up and assaulted the intruder with his knife. 

 

The blade sank into the woman’s arm, but it did not distract her as much as it should. 

 

She grabbed the man by the neck, her fingers tipped with the claws which didn’t belong to the hands of mortals, and ripped his throat out with terrifying ease, blood splashing against the ship’s boards. 

 

The woman - or rather the monster in woman’s skin - threw the body off board with inhuman strength, and giggled, amused. 

 

Takeshi had seen death, men slain in battle, killed a few himself, but he never saw something like her - something like this. The woman - the ghost - wasn’t satisfied with the answers she got, and turned to him. 

 

“Unfortunate, but my god insisted you should join on your own. Otherwise…” 

 

She-monster said, uncaring, her colourful dress stained in gore, unbothered by the dagger still stuck in her arm, and the bleeding wound, then looked at him with unnatural, otherworldly eyes - they were yellow, with slit pupils, like the ones of a snake. 

 

It was wrong, as wrong as things that shouldn’t be. He took a step back, but then quickly gathered his courage, not allowing himself to be intimidated - it was but a single spectre, what could she do against their collective might? 

 

“Kill the demon!” 

 

Takeshi drew his katana and charged. 

 

His blade, poised to strike, however, doesn’t reach her.

 

The air behind the demonic woman shivered, then ripped itself apart, forming into an indescribable, unspeakable vortex of wrongness too painful to look at, more dizzying than the swinging of the ship in a storm, more vertiginous than the fall from the tallest cliff.

 

He couldn’t look. It hurt to do so, and his legs betrayed him. 

 

Takeshi stumbled, lost his grip on his katana, and darkness consumed him momentarily. 

 

His collision with the deck’s hard wood brought him back to the present, lit by the sudden fire, chaos, and screams echoed all around

 

The impeccably blue, cloudless skies shimmered with the same shifting cracks within the fabric of the world, and through them, more monsters came, large, winged ones sweeping down from the heavens like a swarm of enormous locusts, filling the air with shrieks that shattered their minds. 

 

Takeshi could see it, the men falling in front of him, on the deck, or overboard, frozen, unable to move, lifeless, struck down, thought to be dead, killed by those dreadful wails.

 

But they were not dead. 

 

Takeshi could see the body of one of his sailors sliding across the deck to the waters below, caught on the railing, lifeless, yet the eyes, still alive, staring in terror, unable to move, knowing he was going to drown, helpless, unable to lift even a finger. 

 

Takeshi turned, tried to reach the man, the expression of this face covered burned into the memory 

 

It was futile, as from the depths, a tentacled monster crept, claiming the paralyzed man, drawing him down. 

 

A few men, still capable of moving, tried to attack, finally getting to the weapons they had aboard.

 

A spear pierced the tentacle thing, but more came, even as Takeshi still struggled to get back on his feet after staring into the shifting impossibility of the rift for far too long.

 

He wanted to fight back.

 

It would not end like this. They were so close. 

 

The ship shook, its wood croaked, almost as if caught in the mighty storm as the wave rose suddenly, like the water itself came alive, sweeping bodies from the decks, the wind and the wave no longer held any rein over the boats. 

 

The fleet was in disarray, one ship burned, swept under the torrent of fire that came from nowhere, the other one collided with the second in the loud crash, the bodies and the splinters of wood showering the surrounding. 

 

A flying, winged thing collided with the ropes above, crashing into the waves, but more came 

 

The ship rocked violently, as if being swept in the massive wave of the storm under the erringly clear, cloudless sky. The shrieks of the flying demons were the only thing he could hear, drowning even the roar of the surrounding sea.. 

 

Then he saw the other ship barreling towards them.

 

With all his strength, Takeshi jumped down,, as the two more ships smashed into each other.

 

The land was close. 

 

There were monsters in the water. 

 

The survivors were yanked up from the water with unseen force, one by one, as Takeshi tried to swim away. 

 

He didn’t look back as the waves carried him away. 

 

Some of the flying creatures that attacked his ships were swooping in, picking survivors from the water.

 

When he reached the rocky beach, he was completely exhausted.

 

Takeshi stumbled out of the water and collapsed. 

 

He made it. 

 

It was, however, not the land he remembered from the previous visit, but an otherworldly, alien nightmare, with strange plants bearing even stranger shades of green 

 

The large insect, a massive specimen, even as large as a hunting hound, skittered from the overgrown lands towards the stranded man, inspecting him with its multitude of  eyes, the antenna twitching in agitation. 

 

Takeshi threw a stone at it, hit, but it only angered the monster further, encouraging it to bring more of its ugly kind from the shade of the otherworldly plants to swarm him. 

 

Before they struck, however, the air once again shook, shivered, and the very fabric of the world tore apart in yet another comprehension defying rift. Just looking hurt him once more.

 

The strange woman with the snake eyes was back. 

 

Though her robe was still stained by blood from the seemingly inconsequential stab wound, she didn’t seem any worse for wear, and this time, she wasn’t alone. 

 

There were more creatures with her, and neither of them looked like the ordinary mortals. 

Two of them, a black furred, wolf-like demon, dressed in lamellar armour suits, though lacking the helmets, approached him, while the equally dark coloured cat-like being stayed a few steps behind, and he wondered - perhaps the monk was right all along. 

 

There was a great evil ahead. 

 

The woman - only human looking, if one ignored the eyes of the snake and claws used to tear the man apart - came and kneeled next to him, smiling, revealing her sharp, pointed teeth. Takeshi didn’t feel defiant this time. 

 

Perhaps he did want to hear about god.