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Before you see or hear anyone, you feel an ominous presence. Something is slithering through the rooms, a dark malignant energy. It scrapes against your skin and blows past your ears. You cannot move to escape, and you cannot see to look away. But it was here, for a moment, then it was gone. The silence is broken and you hear the door slide open, Renho enters the room. The bag is removed from your head, and with a few snaps of her fingers the retainer guarding you leaves. Leaving you alone with the witch. She sits in the chair across from yours.
"Welcome to the house of the Jikininki, how are you enjoying your accommodations?"
You do not answer, as the only alternative is to be impolite.
"Do you know why YOU are here?"
"Something to do with the investigator I assume"
She looks surprised, "So it has sense when its sober! How amusing. Do you know why HE is here?"
You are starting to get an idea of Yuki's purpose, but don't yet see the full picture. So you feign a deeper ignorance. "He is investigating a murder"
She scoffs and stands to pace back and forth behind you. To rethink her strategy and attack vector.
"Tell me swordsman, what do you know of the Jikininki clan?"
"Nothing, is the lady preparing to educate me?"
She ignores you comment and continues. "Six hundred years of recorded clan history. My ancestors were warlords, they ruled these lands when this spot was just a village. Then, in a fit of dishonourable conduct, another warlord came with his armies. He took our lands, crushed our legacy, and divided it among his undeserving retainers. All in the name of unity. This warlord would go on to crown himself the first shogun." She places her hands on your shoulders, and her voice grows with intensity with every word. "But we survived swordsman, we adapted. Our history was never lost. We crawled, we scavenged, we bled." her nails sink into your skin "When the shogun declared the sword hunt, my father and his father served the Daimyo in the civil war that followed. When the Daimyo needed coin, who did he ask? When the shoguns armies squatted over those mountains, who's men bled and died so that the Daimyo could keep his head?" She releases you and comes to once again stand before you. There is something in her hand, a sword! But not just any sword, its YOUR sword. Your phantom pain returns with a vengeance.
