The God Wars Saga - Era of the Fallen - Prologue, Part 2
The Waters and the Brand
This is part two of my ongoing series, The God Wars Saga. To read part one or go to series’ homepage, click here.
Part 1 recap: Natsuhiko lives in a small village with his family in the fantasy-Japan inspired land of Gendō. His life is simple, but something is wrong in the forest where he hunts. An eerie, black smoke rises from the corpses of the dead animals. He soon encounters one of the old gods, a powerful being named Sui. Sui begins to flood the forest with the same waters that destroyed the village days before Natsuhiko’s birth. She tells him that he was meant to die that day, but someone saved him…
Natsuhiko’s feet tore through the soaked grass. His lungs heaved. He dared not look back as the sound of rushing water came closer and closer.
Sui’s laugh clamored through the forest. Even above the noise of water, it rang.
He dashed between trees and ducked under yew branches. He worried about the village. It sat only a stone’s throw from the edges of the forest—his home the closest building to the woods.
A gust of wind tore through the leaves. Natsuhiko burst through the brush. The pines and dirt lingering on his skin. High above, the moon bore witness to the unbelievable. He did not wonder how the waters raged through the land. Natsuhiko knew the stories. He had heard of the old gods—even venerated them. Instead, he questioned his luck.
Why here? Why now?
Stone cut his wet feet as he approached his home. His mother waited outside, her arms wrapped around Saya. Routa, Akihiko, and Kagome stood beside them.
“Run!” Natsuhiko yelled. “The waters are coming!”
His mother acted first. She scooped up Saya. She ordered Routa and Akihiko to head for the center of the village, waking as many people as possible.
“Kagome!” Natsuhiko spoke to his eldest sister. She was only two years younger than him at twenty-three. “Move!”
Kagome’s eye were wide. Stark, white, and terrified. They looked past Natsuhiko, focusing on something in the distance.
He still did not dare to look behind him. The water lapped at his ankles. He grabbed his sister’s hand and pulled her along with him.
Kagome spoke. “But the house…”
“There’s nothing we can do! We have to leave.”
The six of them ran through the village, screaming for the others to wake. A few elders and some young men who sat in front of the bathhouse drinking stood alert.
“The waters are coming.” Natsuhiko’s mother spoke to the elder nearest to her, Hachirō.
The hunched man looked eastward. “There was no quake. The sea is calm. What are you saying?”
His mother shook her head. “Not from the sea. From the forest.”
Even in the darkness, the man’s face paled. Natsuhiko was surprised by how quickly Hachirō believed his mother. He listened for the water, but was unsure if he could still hear its rush.
His mother then turned to him, her face grave. She placed Saya down on the ground. Her hands were warm on Natsuhiko’s shoulders. Their eyes met.
“You saw her, didn’t you, Natsu?” she said. “The woman who brought the water.”
He nodded. “She had blue skin and hair white like the moon.” His hand still wrapped around Kagome’s. She shook when he spoke.
The old man pushed Natsuhiko’s mother out of the way. He pointed crusted eyes at Natsuhiko. His watery lips trembled as he spoke.
“Did she speak? Did that woman speak?”
“She said that her name was Sui. Or at least, she said that is ‘what your kind calls me.’”
Hachirō groaned. Looking up to the heavens, he fell to his knees. His cry rang out as more villagers stumbled from their homes.
“She’s returned. She’s returned!”
“I don’t hear the water anymore, though.”
Natsuhiko listened. The roaring had died away. The chirps of the cicadas and the wind cascaded over the village.
“It stopped?” The villagers began talking amongst themselves as relief set in.
Natsuhiko let go of Kagome’s hand. “What was he saying? What does he mean she’s returned?”
His mother shook her head. She pulled Saya close. “The waters, Natsuhiko. The waters that tore through this village days before you were born. They were her waters.”
He stood in stunned silence.
“Half the village died that day. After Saya was born, your father swore to avenge them. That’s why he left.”
Natsuhiko recalled the day. He was nineteen at the time. The two of them had always hunted together. That day, his father had told him to go on ahead. When Natsuhiko returned, he found his mother in tears. Kagome had hardly spoken since.
His mother had never talked freely about their father from that time on. “He wanted to avenge them?” Natsuhiko asked. He wondered what his father had thought he could do against the power of gods.
“Your father was certain he could win. Certain that he could make sure no one ever died again. He went to hunt the old gods. The one that brought the waters.” His mother looked towards the forest. Tears fell down her cheek. “Despite it all. I had hoped. I had hoped for so long.”
They waited an hour before returning home. Everyone wondered why the waters had stopped. The torrent had reached their doorstep. Natsuhiko stared down at the dirty liquid.
Kagome’s voice shook beside him. “Why has she done this?”
He shifted his seat on the tatami. “I don’t know.”
Their mother hustled behind them, preparing the morning meal. The smell of rice filled the house. Above the dark trees in the distance, the sun rose. The sky surrounding it burned purple.
“But I knew something was wrong in that forest,” Natsuhiko said. “I don’t think the waters are going to be the last of her. I think that was only to scare us.”
Kagome covered her face with her hands. Natsuhiko rubbed her back. He remembered Kagome before their father left. She was strong and brash. Running with the village boys and insisting that she come hunt with Natsuhiko. But since the day their father left, something had changed in her.
Kagome was a husk of her former self.
That day, Natsuhiko had been out hunting. When he arrived, his father was already gone. But everyone had sat in a stunned silence as tears flowed. No one had ever told him what their father had said to them before he left. He wondered often, but never had the will to ask.
“Come eat.” Their mother’s voice was weary.
Silence sat with them during breakfast. Even Saya didn’t speak. The clank of the wood, of their bowls and chopsticks, was the only voice in the room.
Natsuhiko jabbed at the rice. He barely ate. He wondered how the boar and the woman might be connected. None of it made sense to him.
The sun continued its ascent. Its light glistened on the water outside of the house. Finally, their mother broke the silence.
“They want to fortify the village.” She spoke of the other villagers and Hachirō. Natsuhiko had caught parts of the conversation before they had returned.
“Wooden walls won’t do anything against the waters,” Natsuhiko said. “We’ll drown within them like fish in a net.”
“We have to protect our home,” Kagome said. She slammed her hands down on the tops of her thighs. Tears fell from her crunched eyelids.
Natsuhiko stood. As Kagome cried, his younger brothers and Saya looked at him. Fear shrouded their faces.
“We need to leave, okāsan. We can’t stay here. Trying to protect the village is futile,” Natsuhiko pleaded.
His mother tucked loose strands of her hair into the cloth that covered her head. “We can’t leave the other villagers. You know that. Trying to leave is punishable. Our family will be branded as outcasts. If they want to protect the village, then we need to help—”
“I don’t care about the other villagers. I care about you!” Natsuhiko spread his arms in front of him.
“Your father thought the same,” his mother said. “He went out on his own to fight the gods. Now he’ll never come home again.”
“I don’t want to fight the gods,” Natsuhiko said. “I want to protect my family. If father couldn’t, then I will.”
He turned towards the door. Kagome’s stifled cries hung in the air. Routa moved to comfort her. The waters sloshed outside, the soaked land groaning. In the distance, the forest was shadow.
Natushiko woke early, even before his mother. He stepped outside, making sure his bow and knife were where he had left them. He inhaled three times. The dank air soaked his lungs, but the water had receded somewhat. Puddles littered the dirt around their home. He heard the clang of hammers in the distance. The villagers had already begun building the fortifications.
He went back inside. Taking the leftover rice from the previous day, he tied as many onigiri as he could inside his cloth sack.
“We’ll need water, too.” His mother stood by the door. She slid it shut, hiding his siblings from his field of vision.
Natsuhiko hadn’t heard her rise. “Okāsan…”
Her arms wrapped around him. “You are right, Natsu. I know you are. But this is our home. I couldn’t imagine leaving it. If we are caught…”
He held her tight. “We won’t be. We have to leave. The forest. Something is wrong there. I know this isn’t the last of what is going to happen.”
“Which is why I agree with you. We need to leave early, before more of the villagers wake.”
The two of them set to preparing more rice and dried fish. They would have to fill their water skins at the stream near the entrance to the forest.
Natsuhiko paused his work. “There’s one more thing I wanted to ask you.”
“What is it?” She didn’t look up from the bag she was packing.
“That woman. She told me I was supposed to die ‘that day.’ She said that someone saved me.”
His mother stopped working. She turned, her face calm. A smile played on her lips.
“I’ve always told you that you were saved that day, haven’t I?”
“I thought…”
“You didn’t believe your mother, did you?”
“What happened?”
She looked upwards, her eyes lost in the past as she recalled the memory. “That day, the waters came from the forest as well. We had little warning. By the time I heard them coming, I thought it was too late. Your father ran outside, and I followed, trying to stop him.
“And there she stood. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her skin was perfect, her hair was black as night, but she was glowing. I could barely look at her. She said that her name was Amaki, and that she wanted to protect humans. Your father tried to drag me away from her, but I begged her to save you.”
A single tear fell down his mother’s cheek. “That’s when the waters came. But she stopped them. I’d never seen anything like it. It was like a wall had been placed in front of her. The waters crashed against it, slamming and spraying up into the air. That’s when we ran and found the hill where we stayed until the waters stopped.”
“Amaki?” Natsuhiko repeated the name. “The goddess?”
“She saved us. She saved you.”
“Then we should try to find her again, shouldn’t we? If she stopped the old gods once before, perhaps she can do it again?”
His mother’s answer didn’t come before the knock on their door. Natsuhiko opened it.
The old man, Hachirō, stood at the threshold.
Natsuhiko’s heart sank. Behind the elder, Kagome waited. Her head pointed down towards the ground, her hair stifling her cries. Behind her, even more men of the village gathered.
“Betraying the village is a punishable crime!” Hachirō yelled. “The waters will come again. Traitors are not tolerated here. The gods will wreak havoc on us even more if we have an unbranded traitor in our midst.”
Natsuhiko swallowed. He knew the punishment for betrayal—the brand. Bearing the mark ensured that all the villagers knew of the treachery. And it appeased the gods, who were said to punish the villages with unbranded traitors.
Hachirō continued. Natsuhiko hardly listened to his babble. His eyes locked on Kagome’s hidden face.
“Kagome…” he said.
She muttered something he couldn’t hear.
“Kagome, how could…”
“Father told us not to leave! He said he’d come back! That was his last wish for us, okāsan!” Kagome’s voice silenced even the old man.
Their mother spoke. “Kagome…”
“The girl did the right thing.” Hachirō stepped farther into the house. “I should have known with this family…with how your father abandoned the village. I should have branded you then. These are dark times, and the gods do not protect villages with traitors. You were a good family, and I thought with your obedience, the gods would be appeased. But I was wrong. Your father brought this on you. We protected you and let you live without the brand. And now you want to betray us? I am sorry to say that your sins must be repaid.”
Natsuhiko didn’t feel the men grab him and tie his wrists. He didn’t hear the screams of his siblings or the protests of his mother.
He only stared at Kagome’s shadowed face.
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As beautiful as a well-executed watercolor.