9. Kyudojo

RageChild had been told that Airgoidh was down in the shajo, and she made haste to find the Paratwa. Her mission with the Brutor Matari, Khaldorn Murino, had been successful. The news reporter had obtained the delivery cases from Amamake, and gave them the one marked for MinMatar. Little occurred on their trip back to inner Matari space with the crate, however, according to GalNet news, the Amarrians had been on the receiving end of terrorist activity. Apparently they had managed to make safe their crate, but in RageChild’s heart she felt conflicted. She fought the Amarrians, and wanted them dead, but not in this way.

The Gallente and Caldari, however, remained silent.

The monastery of Beyond Reach sat on the mountain cliff, and all of its internal hubbub occurred within its walls or deep inside the cliff. The spiritual aspects of the monastery, other than mindfulness of every moment of course, were in the deep Onganese forests thousands of meters below in the valley. Included was a kyudojo for those monks to practice the Way of the Bow.

She had never been down in the forests below the monastery, her work and rehabilitation for those few years high in the clouds of Onga and deep in space. It surprised her now that she had not, for the instant she stepped off the winding stairs leading into the forest, she was instantly calm. Gone were the trials and paths yet undone. Gone were the concerns of her birth. Gone were the blind words of the Amarrians, and her hate of them. Only her breathing seemed important here, and she minded that simple task, letting the air flow in naturally through her nose, and out through her mouth.

She walked among douglas firs that dared reach as high as the monastery, and blue spruce that were larger in diameter than most ships. Ferns and wildflowers filled in the undergrowth, with a predominance of blue cornflower. The path led to a junction of three paths. No sign pointed in the direction of the shajo, nor were there sounds to indicate which path.

“Better today than tomorrow,” she heard Acharya say in her mind, his favorite phrase.

“Yes, better today.” She took the middle path, any concern for arriving at the kyudojo late or early was dismissed. She realized it did not matter which path she took for they all ended at the shajo.

Sister.

RageChild clung to that meekest of shared-mind, but it faded as did the light as she traveled from under one tree to the next. She had tried to connect with Gaelbhan, but the strain had caused her to sweat and falter. Her sister was free, escaped most likely, but where was she? Closer certainly to her now that previously, but the fleeting shared-mind refused anything more direct or sustaining.

It also seemed the shared-mind was becoming more clouded, less capable of remaining viable. RageChild cried as she walked into a stand of aspen and blue spruce. She might be losing both her sisters-of-faith.

Half and hour later she emerged from a stand of aspen into a clearing. Airgoidh stood in pose with her bow, and RageChild saw a wild boar beyond near the far edge of the meadow. Waiting in silence, she watched as Airgoidh seemed about to loose the arrow, then simply quit her stance. Suddenly, the Paratwa spun in place, and snapped her bow in two against a timber of the shajo. She was smiling.

**

The whispering of the aspen trees helped calm Airgoidh’s mind as she stood at the honza, holding her bow with her left hand and arrows in the right at her side. The entire center of this cusp-shaped valley was a forest of aspen, and a slight wind always seemed to move through to set the spade-like leaves to rustling. Four thousand meters from the winding stair, ten AU from any other place, the kyudojo remained one of the great havens for the monks of Beyond Reach. It was said that aspens were actually one organism, and that this valley was the largest living single organism in all of New Eden. To be standing here, she felt it a fitting testament to the collaboration between Matar, the Father, and Cizin the Transitional One.

She stood less still as the mountain, resting on legs that mirrored the aspen trees in the wind. She set the tip of her bow a few centimeters above the worn dirt, and bowed to the target. The matoba sat in front of her, exactly thirty meters away inside the clearing. Today, on this day three days after she woke, the matoba was a wild boar that had wandered into the kyudojo; planting itself in front of the standard target, eating grass, it seemed to wait for her as she performed the techniques of the Way of the Bow.

The Acharya had said this warrior’s discipline had been passed down since even before the EVE Gate, and had instructed her in its techniques. “Better today than tomorrow,” he had told her when she took to the method instantly. She understood his meaning, and performed one hundred complete sets every morning, then again every night. The Acharya called it her spiritual forging, and she agreed. This morning saw a beautiful sunrise, and she had started out early. The whispering aspen kept her mind focused even as the sound seemed to her like a brook filled with winter’s thawing. She prepared for her first set of one hundred.

Raising the bow toward the wild boar, she stepped forward three times, turning to keep the target to her left. As she performed the preparatory steps to the first stance, setting the bow and arrow to match the needs of the Way, she let the thoughts of her dreams enter and leave her mind without notice. She had dreamed of her sister imprisoned on the Amarri ship. She had dreamed of RageChild providing escort to the vital antidote to stave off the Sect of the Warden’s plot, but more than that, she dreamed of her sister-of-faith’s awakening in the clone tank. All of these people in her dreams, they were her and she them. She felt no distance or barrier between what they felt and thought any more than she could feel separate from herself.

Airgoidh fixed her relationship between her body and the target in her first stance, ashibumi. Already and always looking at the wild boar, she used her peripheral vision to draw a line from that target down the length of the clearing to herself. She set her left foot on the imagined line, then took a moment to verify the alignment by setting her right foot on that same direct line.

Kyudo was an art she enjoyed, even more than tinkering with computer systems. The Acharya had thought the discipline of this meditation would provide guidance to stabilize her mind against the effects of the skill packs and bio-implants. Even though she wanted to, she did not laugh. She respected the monk, but to assume her frail or maladjusted was the response of a weaker perception.

In the correct position now, naturally stable and erect, she moved her pelvis slightly forward, feeling in her bones and mind that her shoulders and pelvis were parallel to the line to the target. The boar continued to feed on the grasses, and she felt no hurry to finish the beast off. Kyudo had no techniques that could bypass or speed up the natural cycle of the Way of the Bow. The beast would still be there when they were ready, the hunts woman and the animal, ready to end the cycle of hunter and hunted.

Airgoidh practiced daily, for enjoyment and discipline certainly, but also because to practice kyudo was to practice the most fundamental aspect of nature – faith made real. Cizin sought to balance the universe’s energies, keeping the light and the dark on an even line. To that end, the Transitional One created the Paratwan soul, and in cooperation with Matar, the Father, set that soul into a body natural to the evolution of humanity of that era. In millennia past, before EVE Gate, Paratwa were clones. Today, the soul of these warriors and assassins were born into bodies throughout the cosmos, Becoming as they were needed in the ways Cizin demanded.

Moving the bow back to the center of the body, her right hand set itself to notch the glove on the string. Yugamae, the three movements, told her to prepare the bow and arrow in reference to the target. For her, kyudo helped her understand what the Paratwan target really must be, and the entire act of performing kyudo told her the true intentions of Cizin. It was in the practice of kyudo that she felt closest to the Transitional One, more particularly the knowledge of what it was Paratwa were really meant to accomplish – an understanding made real as she prepared the bow and arrow and understood that rebalance could never be accomplished by simply being the opposite of the darkened energies. That was the way of foolishness, like being the sun and always chasing the moon.

Uchiokoshi came next, which for an outsider unclear of the spirituality of kyudo, the enactment of faith, seemed to be only about raising the bow. She raised the bow with her right hand, her shoulders unmoving, still exactly parallel to the boar and straight in reference to the ground. She raised the bow high, but did not draw the string nor did she move the bow in the direction of the target.

To enact faith, to make the ephemeral real, was the easiest thing any human could do. Her dreams and her perception and empathy of Cizin made the whole effort so clear. Even a baby understood these things, but so few Paratwa remembered this simple fact. She had come to learn that the sects of the Paratwa were detrimental to their membership, yet in Cizin’s wisdom these sects were needed so that the True Ronin Paratwa could realize their destiny. Without those sects and their pandering and methodical need to congregate and be a group, she would not be here to understand what Cizin wanted her to do. All things, every speck of dirt, every missile and Amarrian, were connected. It was in the formation of sects of Paratwa throughout history that created the conditions necessary to bring the True Ronin into the embrace of Cizin – to truly rebalance the energies. Just as in kyudo, Cizin had developed stages of growth for his warriors.

Airgoidh drew the bow with her left hand while her right drew the arrow back to the level of her ear, always making sure to maintain a slight downward incline of the arrow. The Onganese morning had provided enough dew that a drop of water ran obligingly down the shaft and fell from the tip. The perfection of the nature of nature.

A short hesitation, then she continued the drawing of the bow and arrow to its fullest length. With the bowstring touching her chest, she moved the bow so that the arrow was horizontal and aimed. The boar continued to wait, feeding. Airgoidh performed kyudo. That was the nature of faith realized.

She stretched her shoulders outward and she forced the bow wider. It wasn’t necessary to release the string. Nature would handle that when the time was right, when the cycle needed to be completed. Her right arm pulled further, turning inward to allow for an even greater bow width.

History, even if the most ancient and possibly clouded, spoke of Paratwa being used as warriors and assassins by great nations in world-spanning wars, both outright and underneath the coating of civilization. History spoke of these assassins and warriors being feared by so many that they were hunted by whole armies, even hunted by their creators after a time for fear of their strength. That was the way of nature – not the strongest being defeated by the weakest, rather the way nature and faith demanded – stronger and weaker emulsed by flame. To pit the light with the dark in pure opposition was foolishness, and Cizin knew any such attempt would fail.

The first Paratwan were cloned. This kept their numbers small, but then the need to rebalance humanity wasn’t as large as it was now. As the years went on, Paratwa grew in number as nations developed these warriors to fight their battles. As more destruction reigned upon the nations, the leaders realized their great blunder and attempted to end the lives of their creation. Wars against the Paratwa began, time and again, throughout history as the Paratwan fought to rebalance the energy. In that fact Airgoidh found the most illumination. Just as nabiai, the stretching and extending of the bow in preparation of the arrow being shot at the target, so it was with the brilliance of Cizin; to think of balancing energy like two eggs on a teetering stick made her laugh. The stick would teeter to one side, then the next as the eggs were affected by outside forces. Such an analogy seemed the only way for those with lesser perception of the universe to understand Cizin’s plan. She saw it clearly, as clearly as the wild boar and her drawn bow with readied arrow.

She had tried to explain it to the Acharya. He listened and asked frank questions, but she did not see the light of realization in his face and eyes. To understand the Paratwan way was to move beyond all of the sect-ual teachings, to build on the realization of faith and evolve into the assassins Cizin needed. If the eggs came together, both sides of the equation were just as unbalanced as before. That was the way of nature, to shift from one side to the other, but always in a cycle. It was that cycle of nature that needed correction, not from within, but from without. Attacking and destroying the Amarrians as a force for good was not the way to balance the energy. Balance required both sides to be – or not to be. It was the size that concerned Cizin.

Cloning of pilots and replacement of ships and weapons had become so common that neither side could hope to achieve their goals in the ways they had before – foolishness to think a dead Amarri wouldn’t come again as a clone and start the process over. It was Cizin’s great wisdom that he foresaw humanity’s growth, and set his plan to be capable of handling any growth or place. One could not have total darkness nor complete light, and certainly not one or the other on such a mass scale as was the current civilizations of New Eden.

The wild boar chewed its grass, seeming to look at her, or perhaps simply listening to the whispering aspen. Her bow stretched and the arrow would be released when it would.

To truly rebalance the energy of the universe, to truly do the will and bidding of Cizin was to understand his plan. She saw this plan clearly, and her perception of it and empathy with it had come about because of her intense search for that freedom that she had never known, not in the slaver paddies, not even after her sister placed her in the Republic Military School. Only now, in the shajo was she free.

History spoke of the Paratwa becoming the nemesis of the light and the dark, both former enemies now faced with their mutual destruction. The combined armies of the enemies against the strength of the Paratwa could only lead to one result – the minimization of the exclusive energies. Only in creating a situation where light and dark would cancel each other out not by fighting each other, but together fighting the Paratwa – that was the key to being one with Cizin.

She had at first found it ironic that the Degraded, those who had become the Sect of the Warden, had come to understand a little of what Cizin intended. They were not Paratwa, however, and had not gone far enough in furtherance of the great goal.

History spoke of armies fighting the Paratwa and the world being nearly obliterated. After that minimization of energy, what little humanity remained did not so quickly become unbalanced in relation to nature – just as she referenced herself to the wild boar by posing in a particular way, so it was for the cycle of Paratwa. One-for-one destruction in Cizin’s fire kept that great effort from becoming too misaligned too quickly. Matar, the Father, however had created nature. Nature evolves and grows. Cizin’s fire could not so easily keep the balance, and once that balance became too unsteady, he returned the souls of the Paratwa to the worlds of humanity to restart the cycle.

The cycle of light battling the darkness, the creation of sects to monotonize the Paratwa of the time, the casting off of the ronin from those sects, finally the enlightenment of the True Ronin Paratwa – all a cycle built by Cizin to minimize the energies. Only in minimization could balance be truly achieved for the longest period of time.

Airgoidh felt the moment of arrow’s release approaching, and she withdrew her strength from the bow to prevent it. She let the bow return to its natural form and she reflected on the nature of her body, and what had come before and remained behind. She was ronin, now on the true path of the Paratwa as set out by Cizin. She would soon need to leave behind her sisters, possibly the fight against the Amarr in some ways, and start the wars against the Matari. Her path lay in creating conflict between them, to spur violent reaction and to use the two nations to build armies of warriors to battle the other. As time passes, she would see her plans setting these armies of Paratwa against their creators, for they were the True Ronin and they walked the true path. Let that cycle be done as the light and darkness obliterated their mutual enemy and the Paratwa together in one fell cut.

The wild boar had stopped feeding, and turned away into the forest of aspen. She watched it go. She was no longer the hunter, and the wild boar no longer the hunted. That old method was out of phase with the growth of humanity and the level of achievement in cloning and implantation.

She spun in place, smashing the bow against the hard trunk of one of the shajo’s support timbers. The bow snapped and its pieces fell to soil. She had once been the bow that fought the

battles for light against the darkness, now an intermediary with plans to defeat their agents in a traitorous spree of assassinations and plots. They would rely on her as they would a bow, and she would snap in two, her and her tway, revealing their soft underbelly. She was on the path of the arrow, which did not exist simply to be, but to be flown to its target through the proper performance of kyudo.

She felt her sister-of-fath standing behind her near the forest’s edge. She could sense the woman’s caution and astonishment. In the release of her perception by use of the skill packs and bio-implants, she felt as close to Cizin as anyone could in these times – how could that sister know of that connection? She would not.

The monks of Beyond Reach had a poem that she spoke now in cadence to the whispering aspen.

When shooting an arrow
As you fully extend the draw
You might awaken.
At the moment of release
There is no thought, no idea.

She felt awakened.

cont...