Cold Steel - Inazuma Gaiden

XVII: Wintry Songbirds and Where They Perch

Kamisato Ayaka's pounding headache and ungodly exhaustion was only matched by her annoyance. Unlike many others who preferred their rest, she was not the one to love the touch of the dark void, in fact - she easily preferred to be in the land of living instead of being chained down by something as simple as sleep deprivation. Passing out meant that she was indeed beaten by her own physical limitations, something that she sought to surpass long before she was even made lady of the clan.

She felt the warmth of layers of wool or perhaps cotton beneath her body and the soft embrace of the comforter being draped over her - both of which were a stark contrast to her most recent memory, being involved in a battle of sorts on the shores of Yashiori. The clan lady would eventually make an effort to open her eyes, feeling that she's been gone from the waking world for far too long, considering her previous circumstances.

Her steel orbs cracked open and adjusted to the dark environment easily enough, she found wooden ceilings, perhaps made out of dark oak staring back at her, while panning her gaze to her left and right, she would see walls made out of the same material, with no decorations or other notable furnishings to speak of. The room she was placed in didn't even have a window, hence the dark surroundings, with only the light of a nearby torch giving the premises any hint of illumination.

The feeling of being confused and lost, not knowing where she was, and not even being able to tell the time only pushed her annoyance past its limits. Ayaka immediately sat up, threw the blanket off from her torso and immediately scanned her own body - which was thankfully still clothed with her traveling kimono - and noted no physical injuries apart from some sore joints here and there.

Realizing her actions just now, she eventually felt guilty and folded the blanket back into a much more presentable state, and tidily placed it on the top of her futon.

The lady trusted her mind to be sound enough to recall what'd happened to her prior to being tended to in this unknown establishment. She remembered taking refuge from a snowstorm inside a wrecked ship on Nazuchi with her companion, she remembered resuming their travels on the following morning and the standoff they had with the strange vagrants who had their minds consumed by the Tatarigami, yet somehow still maintaining uniformity throughout the battle.

And the skirmish itself only happened because they stood in their way when the pair tried to enter Yashiori Island and stop by the forward main base of the Watatsumi Resistance, Fort Fujitou.

Fort Fujitou...

...That's right.

Ayaka was quick to snap her eyes to the find any marks, icons, sigils, emblems, anything that could identify the owner of the establishment. From the empty room she's in and the lack of lavish design or grandiose furnishing, she would argue that they were probably in the right place, as something as practical as a Fort would be simplistic in overall design. The next thing she picked up was the circular image printed on the sliding door screen, the only one leading to that particular section of the structure.

The image in question was incredibly rounded and elaborate in design, to the point that she couldn't even begin to identify what was being depicted on the crest as a whole. It somewhat and very roughly resembled the three-headed lightning, the symbol of Electro, however the three heads in question were angled differently and each of the individual heads had strikingly different motifs.

Overall, the main, three-headed symbol itself almost looked like a fish, or other aquatic creature associated with the deep sea. The leftmost head resembled a... well, a head, with a visible rounded eye - or what she thought to be an eye, at least. The bottom portion of the symbol mostly resembled something akin to a fin of sorts, paddling through what seemed to be water currents. The rightmost symbol was similar to a fish's tail, again - swishing against the incoming currents of liquid.