The Day of Thunder

[Otomo Akutou]

He found himself sitting on a cushion on top of a single tatami mat. He was holding a cup of what smelled like sub-par tea. Next to him, a middle aged man dressed in a pure white kimono, folded the wrong way like a corpse, also held a cup of tea. It would all be extremely mundane if nit for the endless mists of Meido stretching in all directions beyond. Disturbingly, it immediately brought to mind the perpetual fog of the village, and the mists beyond that were too thick to penatrate.

Were they all already dead?

His thoughts are interrupted by the man next to him, his voice bored. "Let's review your performance, shall we?"

He brought up an image that floated in the air. Akutou, killed by a stray arrow in the eye, just one of many falling in a group of archers.

He waved his hand, and another - maybe a previous incarnation? - appeared. A tribal woman, killed in a raid, her killer not even looking at her.

Another, a Nezumi, being bitten in half by a monstrous oni while others run away.

Another, somewhere with endless sand and great sandstone buildings. He was there, somehow he recognized himself, dressed in a white linen kilt, having his own curved sword shoved into him.

So many lives, all grist in the mill of war.

The man next to him sips his tea. "Well... you've made an adequate meat shield. No one can ever take that away from you."

"Didn't I already leave this little party?"

"Clearly not, since you're still here." Another sip of tea.

"If this's th' best you've got," Akutou says, "I ain't impressed." He slaps aside the tea service, grabs the other man by the collar, yanks him closer. "Leave me an' mine alone, you sumbitch."

The man looks at the hand knotted in the fabric of his clothing and shakes his head. Setting down his cup, he reaches up and flicks Akutou on the forehead.

Lightning surged, a chiaroscuro coruscation through the clouds above, and the seas pitched hungrily about the Hopeful Endeavor. The ship’s boy struggled towards the tiller, where the ship’s captain stared with one eye towards an uncertain horizon.

The rain swallowed his words as the boy cried out for aid, calling out to the Admiral who had survived the storms already, screaming for help and safety from scything winds and biting rain and decks that rose up again and again to batter a body bloody.

Another wave swamped the decks, and the boy lost his grip on the railing, swept overboard into churning white teeth ready to gnash upon him.

Flickering lights shone above, fading into the dark.

And then the eyes opened around him, and the tentacles grabbed him.

~~~~~
Will Shapes the Dream failed at 23, https://sakkaku.org/r/11751
Lost in Nightmares
Acquires Cursed by Yume-Do for the duration