DOJOLAND (Elementary)

Chapter 3 - The Tyrant

All in all, Hei's fifth grade experience was a calm one. Studying, playing and sometimes even sparring on PE, where he dodged and blocked very well but tended to telegraph his strikes so much that he never seemed to hit anyone. Still, when everyone played "look how many layers I can break", Hei went through half a directory with a punch, which was about average in a school where children could crack Wooden telephone posts with a kick.

The highlight of that year was the visit to the Old Tyrant palace, one day away on a train or about three day hike for the inhabitants of Dojoland.

About 170 years ago, a monster of a man, the Fiend Kouma of the Oni style , last descendant of his accursed bloodline, ruled over all countries around him and lorded every house and dojo. Every noble family presented both tribute and a 'volunteer' to spar with the tyrant in the very slim hope that there would be a survivor and a witness of the one-hit-kill techniques to pass down some insight. It was written that families that failed to provide even the most minimum satisfaction were then challenged by another house of prominence to be destroyed and whoever survived, could request mercy to the Tyrant and in his fancy, he might even appoint him or her into his service.

The great mystery was how and why the man who seemed the strongest in all of his family's history, which had ruled the land for a nearly millennial dynasty, simply yawned one day, removed his crown and regalia, put it in his throne, breathed fire into it until it melted and walked away forever.

The children looked at the old site of the imperial seat, kept untouched through the years as early scholars who attempted to study the scene felt as if an otherworldly presence peered over their shoulders and unnerved beyond competence. It was room with very luxurious tapestries and rugs, albeit spotted with what many believed to be dried blood; in the center was a charred mass of burnt oak and blackened gold. The children gulped and were thankful that invincible demons no longer ruled the world.

As the children were scorted out, Hei looked back at the site of the throne and tried breathing out warm air into his hand. Maybe those of the Oni style could have such bad breath that turned into gas and had a trick to light it but he doubted the whole thing was really true. Surely it was like one of those magical fairy tales like the eagle and the snake in the middle of a lake or the sword in a boulder or even the one about the giant monster fish that created earthquakes. After all, any scribe could take any liberties when it came to a tyrant that wasn't there anymore. Heck, modern-day writers of fiction depicted old gods and entities that could erase all existence at a whim. The tyrant was probably overthrown secretly and then the rebels burned the throne to make it a symbol of liberation.

Yeah, that was probably it.

They explored the several rooms of the palace where sparring mostly took place. There was a garden large and dense enough to be called a miniature jungle. Apparently, the trees , rocks and even the terrain was shifted regularly and often so the Tyrant would never be 100% used to any tactics that an opponent could use just for the sake of a thrill.

There were two courtyards where old-fashioned firearms, like muskets or arquebus, were used to shoot at random intervals into the ones sparring within. The bullets were marked with serial numbers to confirm if the shooters had struck someone. Some well-kept records showed that although visibility for the shooters was entirely denied, any shooter who managed to grazed the tyrant was rewarded with a sparring session where both were kept blindfolded to see if said shooter was blessed with clairvoyance. Each of their entries into the palace's emergency wing for servants was also kept well recorded.

The children were also introduced to the deep pools where the lord tied his and his opponents' ankles to heavy metal weights to try and fight underwater. Only a handful of those trained in lock-picking made it out.

The old arsenal had become an archive over the ages as the weapons once kept inside had originally belonged to the families who served the tyrant and had all been retrieved. The archive, however, did contain schematics on how to replicate said weapons so historians could see how effective, or rather, how uneffective they had been.

The old kitchens were extraordinary, with store rooms that housed herds and herds of beasts to placate the palate of even the hungriest hellbeast. Still, the antidote wing was even more grandiose.

"Does that mean the Tyrant feared being poisoned?", one girl asked, shocked at the fact.

"ah, no, its construction was rushed by nobles and palace courtiers and grudgingly agreed to by the Tyrant after so many attempts that didn't affect him forced assassins to use poisons so strong that they contaminated entire banquets with such noxious substances that the kitchen staff and all attendees grew sick quickly. The Tyrant grew bored of tossing people to the nearest hospital, on the other side of the river. Then he had to wait for weeks until replacements could clean his toilet or bring him napkins".

Even Hei laughed nervously at that one tidbit. For a second he imagined a massive man on a table snarfing everything in his plate and the plates around him until he realized everyone was inert and green in the face; the man would sigh, finish his meals, turn the table, put the near-corpses at the table and the nearest kitchen and drag it to an open courtyard to throw people away like any child would throw stones or paper planes.

"Well, at least the river's nearby..." Hei said as he remembered that, on the way to the palace, he saw the bus they were riding cross a bridge over a stream right outside the palace. "the hospital probably had a safety net of sorts, right?", he then asked.

"Hm? oh, you mean the Dragon's creek outside the palace? that's actually a modern construction made 20 years ago when the Dragon clan party won the election. The actual river I referred to is the Tar's Course and is 80 miles South East of here"

The children, including Hei, paled.