Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Kappa's Blade
    The Kappa's Blade
    The Kappa's Blade
    Ebook111 pages1 hour

    The Kappa's Blade

    By Sarah K. Campbell and AI

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Japan, 1357. A merciless drought ravages the land, leaving a desolate trail of dust and despair. Yet, amidst the skeletal landscape, the Minamoto clan’s rice paddies flourish, an impossible emerald anomaly in a dying world.  Their secret? A pact with the kappa, ancient water spirits whose magic nourishes the clan’s ambition while poisoning the surrounding countryside.
    Ren, a disgraced ninja haunted by betrayal, is tasked by her rival clan to infiltrate the Minamoto fortress and uncover the source of their unnatural prosperity. Disguised as a wandering herbalist, she navigates a treacherous web of secrets, gathering whispers of strange illnesses and twisted wildlife, each a fragment of the encroaching darkness mirroring her own internal struggle.
    Within the Minamoto’s lush domain, Ren encounters Lord Hiroki, driven by a ruthless vision of power; Akari, his daughter, torn between loyalty and a growing unease; and Kenzo, the village elder, burdened by the terrible knowledge of the pact.  As Ren delves deeper, she uncovers a hidden library containing ancient scrolls that reveal the kappa's true nature – beings far more volatile than folklore suggests.  Their magic, a double-edged sword, threatens to unravel the delicate balance of nature.
    As the drought tightens its grip, the kappa's magic begins to corrupt the very land it sustains.  Grotesque maladies afflict the villagers, the rice takes on a sickly glow, and the once-fertile soil turns to ash. Ren must choose: expose the Minamoto's deceit and risk a bloody clan war, or attempt a dangerous ritual to sever the pact, a gamble that could unleash the kappa’s full, destructive power.
    In a heart-pounding climax of ninja subterfuge, supernatural confrontation, and moral reckoning, Ren must confront not only the enraged kappa but also her own past.  Allied with Akari and guided by a guilt-ridden Kenzo, she embarks on a desperate race against time to restore balance to a land teetering on the brink of collapse. The whispered drought becomes a silent promise, a reminder of the delicate harmony between humanity and nature, and the enduring power of redemption.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateNov 12, 2024
    The Kappa's Blade

    Related to The Kappa's Blade

    Titles in the series (1)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      May 1, 2023

      It has to be one of the gloomiest human characteristicsto wish for something from the pastto return again: So when my girl callsand says she wants her first room back,the one that gurgled and swayed, suspending herin that gravity-free chamber of my b

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Bloom

      Mar 1, 2019

      To attract congruence wavelength to sine reachingvirtue scented rosy blushing to blooma metaphor more than metaphorpurple to red adaptableleaf or blossomstem or spindlecotton floss guided through eyepressed through fabric stretched onto frameeach sti

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In The Thick Of It

      Feb 23, 2022

      In The Thick Of It
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2019

      “My arm is so brown and so beautiful,” is a thought I haveas I’m about to turn off the lamp and go to sleep.I look at it a moment in the soft glow, and see it, briefly,as though it belonged to someone else. A reddishkind of brown, like a toasted almo

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Evaporative Losses

      Sep 15, 2020

      Breath travels. Our mouths are broken-open places—a house where only wind lives, searching the cupboards and closets. I replace your missing mouths with those of jars, mines, graves. What is gathered and dissipated by mouth? Once alternately filled a

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Berber Vodka

      Sep 10, 2021

      Berber Vodka
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Something About John Coltrane

      Sep 1, 2021

      Something about a tree in shallow sleepListening for what it wants to remember: The note of a seed, its neck sliding throughDirt and its confusion—nothing cleansed Of struggle. The weight lost after death,A confrontation of death. John Coltrane Even

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2020

      All the animals you knowwill die. You set foodout for them anyway,let the oily seeds fallamong the fiddleheadsto be ground downpermanent as bone.The forest fills and unfills,drops itself down roottubes and turns to dark lace.One undoing: leafto sparr

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      I whooshedthrough the party. I grewa set of invisible hands. I was flower girlto the Commonwealth where lovers danced a dancecalled the snowdrift. Sugar mapleshelicoptered samarasin my glass. The dogs slackenedin their webs of shade. A democracyof cl

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Nocturne for Eurydice

      Mar 15, 2022

      for “the maiden in her dark, pale meadow” Twilight through the roof of a rain forestshatters like a chandelier of green glass,the shrillness strafed by keening cicadasand unseen flocks of cockatoos that cawtheir catcalls at the meltdown of the sun. D

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Wooden Viking

      May 9, 2019

      The Wooden Viking
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Book of Hours

      Nov 25, 2022

      A Book of Hours
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dreaming Of Symbiocene

      Nov 3, 2022

      Dreaming Of Symbiocene
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Aquarium

      Jun 4, 2020

      The Aquarium
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Tale Of Two Christmases

      Dec 17, 2020

      A Tale Of Two Christmases
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Epic Of Gilgamesh

      Jan 1, 2020

      My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Daniel Halpern

      Jun 15, 2019

      Dear you know who you are: You must be so relievedto have, at last, the weight of my affection off you.Feathery at best, a cloakfor warmth, simple affection. Gone are my fingers through your darkspill of hair, the silken skinof your shoulder aglow in

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cicadas Still Sing

      Jun 3, 2021

      IN LATE JUNE, the thrum of annual cicadas, or chicharras, as we call them here in San Antonio, becomes the dominant sound of summer. The air percolates with percussion as males buckle their ribs to make mating calls. If a female likes a male’s drummi

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      That the semi-circular canal is part of my ear,not a style of Venetian waterway arch,I learned mid-air on a Huffy.That bicycles left long out in the rain split.That prepositions are tricky.That I was made part industrious,part lazy-assed. That descri

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Jun 3, 2024

      Driving south, I cross it—the intangible line beyond which bougainvillea grows, beyond which the land is flagrant. It’s not exact; there is no sign as with a border, so everybody knows. It doesn’t waft to me; it’s not even fragrant. When I see the bu

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ursula K. Le Guin

      Jun 15, 2018

      He was thinking of Lookfar, abandoned long ago, beached on the sands of Selidor. Little of her would be left by now, a plank or two down in the sand maybe, a bit of driftwood on the western sea. As he drifted near sleep he began to remember sailing t

      15 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Kappa's Blade

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Kappa's Blade - Sarah K. Campbell

      Prologue

      The desiccated plains whispered secrets at dusk. Skeletal trees, their branches like brittle bones, clawed at the bruised sky. Dust, the gritty taste of a dying land, coated Ren’s tongue. Disguised as a wandering herbalist, her face shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat, she knelt, fingers brushing the withered leaves of ghost-white plants. Each brittle stem, a fragile echo of life lost, crumbled under her touch. These spectral flora were not what she sought, but their presence spoke volumes. They were harbingers, heralds of a deeper decay, a sickness infecting the very soul of the land.

      The wind, a mournful sigh across the desolate expanse, carried more than just dust. It carried whispers – stories of children born with limbs contorted like gnarled roots, livestock withering to skin and bone under an unyielding sun, fields yielding only the phantoms of harvests past. A tremor, not of the earth but of fear, pulsed beneath the surface of this dying world, a world gasping for a single drop of mercy from the heavens. Ren breathed in the dust-laden air, the scent of decay clinging to her nostrils, a perfume of despair.

      A sudden gust, sharp and spiteful as a yokai's breath, ripped a tattered scroll from her bag. It spiraled away, a fleeting dance of forgotten knowledge, then settled, the faded image of a katana’s gleaming blade momentarily ignited by the dying embers of the sun. Her ancestral blade. The Akita blade. The blade that had been both a promise and a curse. The blade that should have been a symbol of honor, not a mark of shame. The blade she should have wielded with pride, not concealed in the depths of her pack like a stolen secret.

      A visceral memory, sharp as shattered glass, pierced through her carefully constructed emotional armor. The night of her disgrace, a festering wound in her soul, unfolded before her closed eyes. The hushed accusations, venom dripping from every syllable, echoed in the Akita clan’s council chamber. The faces of her brethren, once comrades in arms, now contorted with suspicion and contempt, leered at her from the shadows of memory. The searing brand of exile, an invisible mark seared onto her very being, pulsed with a dull ache. The council, convened under a blood-red moon, had condemned her without proof, without a shred of doubt, banishing her to the fringes of a world already teetering on the edge of oblivion. A world whose whispers echoed her own internal desolation.

      Ren’s jaw clenched, the memory a bitter herb, more potent than any she had yet discovered, on her tongue. She retrieved the scroll, its brittle surface and faded ink a tangible map of her past failures, each crease and tear a testament to the tumultuous journey that had led her to this desolate expanse. The wind intensified, swirling around her like vengeful spirits, a chorus of whispered accusations and lamentations. But beneath the mournful cries, beneath the keening of the wind through the skeletal trees, she detected a new note – a desperate plea for action, a fragile thread of hope woven into the fabric of despair. A plea not for vengeance, not for retribution, but for change. For a restoration of the balance that had been so carelessly disrupted.

      She tucked the scroll away, its touch a ghostly echo of the honor she had lost. The cool steel of the hidden blade pressed against her thigh, a silent promise of redemption. It was not vengeance she sought, not the satisfaction of a blood debt repaid, but the restoration of harmony, a chance to heal the wounds she had witnessed, both within herself and in the world around her. Her honor, lost in the shadows of betrayal, would be reclaimed. Not for the glory of the Akita clan, who had cast her aside like a broken tool, but for the land itself. For the silent whispers of the dying plains. For the fragile hope of a future that seemed to slip further from her grasp with each passing day. Even if it meant confronting the ghosts of her past, even if it meant battling the unseen forces that fueled the drought that threatened to consume them all, she would answer the land's desperate plea. She would not fail again.

      The setting sun, a bleeding wound in the sky, cast long, distorted shadows across the barren earth. Ren rose, her joints creaking like the branches of the dead trees, and turned towards the distant, flickering lights of the Minamoto fortress. It stood on the horizon like a mirage, an island of unnatural abundance in a sea of despair. An emerald lie shimmering in the fading light. A fortress of secrets waiting to be unveiled. Her mission, fraught with peril, called to her. The whispers in the wind guided her footsteps. The blade at her thigh whispered its silent promise. The fate of the land, and perhaps her own redemption, lay within the walls of that deceptive oasis. She would face the darkness, not with fear, but with the quiet resolve of a woman who had nothing left to lose but the weight of her past.

      Chapter 1: The Shimmering Deception

      The jade rice exhaled a heavy, sweet perfume, a stark contrast to the grit clinging to Ren's clothes, a whisper of the plains she'd crossed. Reaching the rise, the valley unfurled below: a breathtaking expanse of unnatural green. The Minamoto paddies shimmered beneath the pale sun, an unsettling oasis in a dying world. A lone thread of smoke rose from the heart of the fortress, its stone walls promising sanctuary or a darker truth.

      Ren adjusted her wide hat, a reflex from years lived in shadows. Beneath her herbalist garb, the Akita blade pressed against her thigh, a cool promise. Descending, the whispers of her journey intensified, the wind carrying a tremor of unease that belied the valley's verdant facade. This was no true oasis, but a meticulously crafted illusion.

      A flash of metal signaled a guard at the field's edge, ramrod straight, hand on his katana. Young, yet burdened, he surveyed the horizon with hawk-like intensity. The silver heron of the Minamoto crest adorned his breastplate, a stark declaration of loyalty.

      Ren approached slowly, feigning weariness. Her woven sack, filled with dried herbs, emitted a calming fragrance, a counterpoint to the jade rice's sweetness, masking the faint fetor she'd sensed from above.

      Halt, the guard's voice cut through the air. Declare your intentions.

      Her heart thrumming, Ren lifted her head, a flicker of vulnerability softening her obsidian eyes. Greetings, she rasped, I am a herbalist, seeking passage.

      His eyes narrowed, dissecting her. An herbalist? These are perilous times.

      She bowed slightly. Indeed, but suffering transcends conflict.

      He advanced, boots crunching on the dry earth. What skills do you possess?

      She raised the sack, the herbs rustling. Remedies for various ailments. Feverfew, valerian root, ginger and licorice.

      His gaze flickered to the sack, then back to her. He coughed, a dry, rasping sound. What brings you to Minamoto lands?

      Ren paused, tracing a lavender sprig in her hatband. Rumors of bounty, a flourishing sanctuary. I yearned to witness it.

      He stiffened. The Minamoto clan enjoys the favor of benevolent spirits.

      Truly, Ren acknowledged, her gaze sweeping over the unsettling perfection of the paddies. An extraordinary feat.

      Silence descended, broken only by insects and the gurgle of irrigation channels. The guard hesitated, hand hovering near his katana. He coughed again, deeper this time.

      Your cough persists, Ren said, concern lacing her voice. Might I offer a remedy? Wild cherry bark and horehound could provide relief.

      He waved her off. A trivial matter.

      Dust can be treacherous, Ren

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1
      pFad - Phonifier reborn

      Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

      Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


      Alternative Proxies:

      Alternative Proxy

      pFad Proxy

      pFad v3 Proxy

      pFad v4 Proxy