Author's Games: Samurai

Battle Task Four: Ren Sanada attacking Naoki Hojo

Clan 13: Ren Sanada

Ren couldn't feel anything.

Her legs felt numb as she walked through the forest. The throbbing in her head had been replaced by a feeling of nothing. Thoughts no longer clouded her mind, and instead she simply couldn't think. She was sure that if she reached out to touch the ground below her she wouldn't feel a thing.

It had been two days since she awoke in the middle of an unknown forest with only the pain in her head and the kimono that she wore. She didn't even have any recollection of how she arrived there.

Perhaps the most terrifying part of it was that she didn't want to know how she got there. Something inside her had broken, and she could feel it in her chest that something was wrong. Ren just didn't want to know what it was. She simply wanted to keep walking until the blue sky took her home.

It was when she heard a new sound in the forest that she tried to focus on the world around her. Her instincts that she had spent so much time refining had dulled into whispers of her past, so all she could do was watch as the herd of soldiers approached her.

They saw her and were moving closer with katanas raised.

"Who are you?" yelled the samurai leading them.

The man was too far away to see clearly, or maybe her eyes just couldn't focus on his face. He sounded like a man she should fear, but she couldn't find the fear inside her. Although his voice was so familiar...

"I am alone," she replied.

"Ren?" asked the samurai, his commanding nature disappearing as he lowered his katana.

She recognized his voice and every memory she had tried to suppress overwhelmed her like a tsunami.

Aiko ran forwards to Ren and barely caught her before she fell onto the ground.

---

Ren awoke to the smell of food cooking. She hadn't been aware of the emptiness of her stomach until now, and she scrambled up from the tatami mat she'd been lying on to find it.

Besides her sat Aiko, who was holding a bowl of soup.

"I thought you were dying," Ren said before taking the soup.

"Well, I didn't," Aiko said with a smile, which Ren did not return.

"Where are we?" she asked, drinking the soup.

"Near the Akaishi mountains, which is where the Hojo clan's fort is. We're less than a day's travel away, and we're planning a-."

"Why are we concerned with the Hojo clan?" Ren interrupted. "I want to go home to the castle."

Aiko's mouth curved downwards and his eyes were focused on the floor. He said, "We can't go back. Several days after the Oda clan captured all of the soldiers at your battle they surrounded your castle. Even I didn't think there was going to be much of a fight so I took all of my men and fled."

He couldn't look her in the eyes.

"You left my remaining soldiers," Ren said.

Aiko nodded.

She couldn't even act surprised, because she had assumed the worse after the Oda general said that one of Aiko's men had betrayed them. He hadn't been lying.

"Yukimara is dead," Ren said.

When she said it aloud, she could feel how hollow her heart was. Each day a little piece left her, and now there was nothing left. Yukimara was gone, Aiko was no longer a friend - he was barely even an ally - and her clan was most likely dead. There was truly nobody left.