This is, I fear, pure quill truth. When you get down to it martial training is about removing your inhibitions about hurting others and making you more efficient at doing it.
All the airy-fairy stuff about how the True Warrior is a pacifist or how martial arts makes you more moral and less violent is nonsense. Zen or esoteric Buddhist teachings with martial arts? It’s to make you a more detached, clear-minded killer.
Do some traditions teach rules of engagement or ethical reasons not to harm others? Of course. It’s like a dog being trained to hold its own leash on walkies or a gun designed to pull its own trigger. It’s an add-on which the instructor hopes will keep him from having to exercise the part of the student-teacher relationship we don’t like to talk about – the part where the student becomes a super-predator and the teacher has to hunt down and kill his own protege.
Gods I’m cynical today. But many years or experience and reasonable amounts of study in the field bear it out.
You’re right, but out of context. Most of any fight is decided in the run-up. Who/what are you fighting for/against? What tactics are ‘honourable’ ? All martial cultures work embed this in some form, because there’s no time to reason this out when weapons are drawn.
If this is the master she wanted, she cannot baulk at the lessons. If she didn’t want innocent lives ended on a whim, she should know whether her master might ask it, and whether to respond when it happens.
Martial arts and ethics are a matter of using a tool and philosophy. Teaching both together is a pretty nifty thing, but at the end of the day, a tool can be used by either an Incubus or a Maya.
I will tell you this, as somebody who actually practices with swords weekly; a level-head means every action must have purpose and reason. This is how to actually get consistent. Good. Incubus had a purpose; both him and Maya could have courage in their hearts, something every fencing master and knight five hundred years ago thought was absolutely essential to striking down your foes.
They were right. One could go into battle well armored, knowing all the art of combat like the back of their hand, and with all the other advantages they could have, but if they lack courage, they might as well go ahead and hang themselves.
Once more though; a warrior like Incubus typically has a lot more rogues crawling up his back to get a good stab in. Maya now stands with the Pursuers, hesitantly, but still with allies.
Those “zen or esoteric Buddhist teachings” associated with a lot of martial arts is usually about teaching you how and when not to fight. That is, if you can accomplish your goals and/or protect yourself without fighting, then you’re obviously a superior and more efficient effectuator than someone who can’t or won’t, since fighting is chaotic, dangerous and really not a great idea if it can be avoided.
… yet an excellent thing to be capable of, so you can choose to pretend to respect the other side’s choice only if it aligns with your own.
If the other side knows this, they, too, will be more willing to pretend that what isn’t, is.
… Has anyone ever compared diplomacy to a sword? How utterly dissimilar the two are?
True story, oddly relevant to this page: a few years ago I “allowed” myself to be robbed.
I was cornered by two men, teenagers really, I’d say 17 or 19. There were no weapons on display except fists. At the time I was in a lot better training and shape than I am now. I was in danger, but not at that moment afraid, which I attribute to all the zen crap. While they were yelling in my face, I had a couple seconds to decide what to do, and I chose to just fork over the cash to get out of a bad situation cleanly.
Unpacking my snap judgements later: I considered fighting, and I believe if I’d suddenly attacked them with extreme force, then on that particular occasion in that particular situation my chances were excellent of surprising and incapacitating both of them without getting hurt myself, and escaping. But it would mean seriously injuring a couple misguided schmuck kids, and I really didn’t want to, even if they were trying to rob me.
If I’d attacked with less than intent to maim, it would be a tussle and I might get hurt. Also, although I’m pretty sure they didn’t, it wasn’t impossible they had knives on their person which case they’d then have a chance to draw them and I’d have been fucked.
So I chose to comply, because it was the option I liked best. The result was exactly the same as if I’d been scared out of my wits and given in out of fear, but I chose to do it rather than thinking it was my only option. My judgements may have been right or wrong, but either way it was a distinct decision on my part.
Ah, but you have forgotten the lowliest being in all of creation: me, without Wealth. But alas that wretched non-entity no longer exists, nor shall it exist again, for I have returned to glory! Not yet the apex of my glory mind you, but I have turned my elevator into a luxury penthouse suite, from which I conduct the business of running my nascent Bank of the Degraded Thief, as molten gold blood flows through my fully vertebrate body!
But fear not, Thorn Knight. I shall forgive the pulverization at your hands, and I shan’t unleash my newly hired Debt Enforcement Agents for your infernal blood. Instead, I will grant you a Tier 4 account at no charge, and a stock in the Bank of the Degraded Thief for free. Consider it mercy from a man who will soon be a lord.
In the end she still has lost for she has hesitated beyond the point of return. At the end a turn someone will die but those who do nothing will lose every time. Though I have been called evil in the past or at least without morales at the end of the turn doing nothing is probably more evil and despicable since even inaction has consequences.
The final truth is that you only do what you want. She wanted the rat to not die, but she wanted to not kill Incuboy even more. And look where that got us.
The importance of want is true, but your reasoning is not fully sound. To defend the rat is a goal, with want. To not kill a fellow student is inaction, no want involved. Until Maya learned her lesson, the two things were unrelated. At the rat’s time, she lacked want to kill Incubus. By Allison’s time, she wants to kill Incubus. But at no point shown in the story has she ever wanted /to not kill/ Incubus.
This isn’t even pseudo-philosophy stuff.
Swift Young Bull who Treads on the Necks of his Enemies
Consider the following hypothetical – What if when Incubus swung his blade to kill the rat, Maya had swung her blade at his neck, but at the last second, made the choice to arrest her blade’s movement, allowing Incubus to live and the rat to die? Would this have been any different from not swinging the blade at all?
There is no difference between action and inaction. Those who possess power continually impose their will upon the world, whether they want to or not.
A Maya interested in making gestures such as this either wishes to hang a mere threat over Incubus or is far less concerned with little lives. This resembles neither the indecisive Maya of the past nor the wholehearted cutter she is today. This person has entirely separate wants driving her actions. Wants and intents matter, and the actions they guide aim people long past any random conversion of outcomes. By presenting an entirely different person as an example, you actually quite neatly dismantle your claim that action and inaction are the same.
Swift Young Bull who Treads on the Necks of his Enemies
Consider, then, another example. A man sits in the desert. Weakened from thirst and hunger, he finds himself unable to move. Another man sits across from him – He has not been in the desert for so long, and he is still reasonably well. In the second man’s left hand, he holds an amphora of water. In the second man’s right hand, he holds a loaf of bread.
The second man has no desire to help the first man. As such, the second man sits there, and does nothing, as the first man dies of thirst and is consumed by flies.
Has the second man not acted? Has he not imposed his will upon the world? Would your answer be different if he simply slit the first man’s throat?
Interestingly, jewish tradition asks the very same question you do, and answer it – although you might find the answer unsatisfying.
The first man’s blood is no “redder” than the second, and the second is not obliged to help him while he is, too, at the desert and might not want to spare from his water. This is fine.
The second man’s blood, however, is not “redder” than the first, and he is not allowed to kill the other himself, even to ensure the first man won’t steal his water in the night.
Honestly this sounds like a more convoluted trolly problem, which you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone has a clear solution. Actions and inactions are not the same, even if they have the same results. This is human.
The man in the desert has awareness of the potential action, he sees the other man and knows his inaction may result in the other mans death. In this case inaction is a choice.
Maya was unaware of the potential act. Killing her fellow student did not occur to her. Not killing him was thus not a choice. If the test were repeated, and Maya, having learned her lesson, did nothing, then a choice would have been made.
If I stand at a river crossing, awaiting a boat to ferry me across, and I choose not to hail the first boat, and let it pass, because it’s garish colours offend me, while unbeknownst to me you swim in the waters below, and are crushed by the paddle wheels as it passes, I did not choose to let you die.
If I do the same thing, knowing you are there, a choice was made.
I believe the purpose of Meti’s lesson was to maximize Maya’s awareness of the potential consequences of her inaction.
Meti’s philosophy is designed for people who are approximately as proficient at killing people as Meti- that is to say, people who can cause or prevent almost *any* eventuality by killing, so long as they are aware that there is a choice.
The lesson to Maya is that Maya is never helpless, always has a choice, and should always fully commit herself to any action she truly wills. The lesson is an attempt to burn the *indecisiveness* out of Maya, because she cannot become as powerful as a devotee of Meti’s sword art will become, and remain indecisive on the grounds that she “didn’t know” she could shape the world by killing people.
Who can truly say what these people want? I find it surprising that one seeking to learn the song of the sword would have any regard for a creature as small as a rat. After all, if you get your wish to become a Sword Saint, you are going to spend a great deal of your life mincing people into burger.
It’s quite simple in KSBD. One follows the path of the sword to take some fractional say in how and where violence shapes the universe. What surprise? Who is to stop wielders from being selective in applying their might?
As well as one who is totally intellectually incurious. Never once did he question why the rat needed to die, or nor why he should shave his head with a rusty sword, simply because some old woman told him to. He has taken for granted the idea that if he does what she says, he will become a great swordsman in the end.
And lo, Incubus is described as the Worst Swordsman. This is not without reason.
Maya speaks from hindsight, and perhaps from arrogance. Perhaps Meti knew that her first student had already learned much of what her second student required.
For all we may prefer Meti to Incubus, Incubus seems the better student, a fellow slave to the sword. That Maya hesitated so long to cut her hair, that Incubus walked without care in the mud soaked in the death of thousands… perhaps Meti’s only true student is not the one Maya believes it is.
Incubus was first in learning what Meti taught them, but Maya was first (and only, it seems) in learning what Meti wanted them to learn. Do not forget how all of Meti’s teachings went to the goal of showing how more honorable the noodle vendor was from the sword saint, or even the demiurge.
Meh. If Meti wanted them to learn something, she should have taught them that, not expect them to figure it out for themselves. Why be a teacher otherwise?
Who said she’s a teacher?, what I see is a mere bum guiding two fools to the logical end conclusion to their ambitions, if they are to learn something on the way its on their own
She tried many times to teach them how dangerous and unadvisable was the use of the sword when making them shave their heads with a rusty blade. And look how did it go for them.
The teacher masters the craft of destroying and rebuilding his students using lies that are more true than facts. The road gets bumpier from here. But fear not. You do not travel alone.
Ah, it is YS-Het and the Centurion come again. I predict that their inevitable confrontation will go much as it did before, with Maya scarred for life and Incubus whimpering in the dirt like a dog, with the only words he ever says to her being ‘kill me’.
Once, before I knew much of the world, I happened upon an old woman offering sword lessons to anyone who would buy her a bowl of soup. Intrigued and wishing to learn to defend myself, I accepted. After our meal she gave me a wooden practice sword and took a stance, unarmed. She told me to strike her in such a way that I should kill her were it a real blade. I tried to do so, and, with a dazzling display of martial arts prowess, she disarmed me. Again I tried, to the same result. The third time, however, it was as if my soul was lit aflame with power, and I struck true. “Consider this exercise,” The woman told me. “I, a master of Pilgrim Fist, was unable to stop the sword of even an inexperienced swordsman such as yourself when you took that blade into your heart. Return here tomorrow for your next lesson.”
As I discovered later that day, the hateful crone used the duel as a distraction to steal my coinpurse, which I normally keep well guarded against pickpockets. Try as I might, I never found her again. I suspect that she was a master of no style but that which allowed her to swindle gold from unwary boys.
Once I had in my wanderings come upon a long-abandoned battlefield of the Gods. Their bones had been long picked of their flesh, their polearms rusted thrice over, and once the moon had risen their ghosts wailed in its pale light.
In a less cynical cosmos, auntie maya could have been a loved and glorious heroine.
But on this divine battlefield, life is cheaper than the steel used to make the weapons that determine its end
He who utilizes the blade to defend against imbeciles should seek not to live by his weapon. If he does, he is an imbecile who knows no useful profession.
Hrmm… in the hands of an adept warrior even the most innocuous item can be a weapon. Say, a hat or belt, bracelets, sandals, a cloak, or even a hair pin. Or half of a rat.
A weapon that kills without a moments hesitation, a hunters rifle for instance, is declared a wondrous thing by some, a dangerous thing by others. A man who does the same is either a monster or a hero. What exactly is the difference between the two? A weapon has no intent, it doesn’t know what it is doing. The rifle could shoot a bird, or a stone, or a man, or a river, and it wouldn’t notice. Yet a man who has truly hardened his heart, he wouldn’t notice either.
Meti might have a fondness for rats, but that fondness did not inhibit her from offering one to be destroyed as a lesson and/or warning for her students. She did not want for it to live more than for it to be used so.
I wonder what else Meti might have offered to be destroyed as a lesson, even though she had some fondness for it, or them, as the case may be?
The only right is existence, the only wrong is nonexistence. Aiat. The only meaningful relationship is the attempt to destroy. Aiat. What is at war is healthy, what is at peace is sick. Aiat.
I feel the poison of sword law worming it’s way through my soul. Maya showed mercy indeed in sparing an aspiring student. At times like these I am want to despair and shrink from my calling. Then I step back and ponder on the height that must needs balance these depths.
I am more than I was before
from rotten pit to blissful shore
the sure way calls: Be damned no more
PLANS WITHIN PLANS!?
The final exam has been sitting next to you the entire time.
TO KILL WITHOUT THOUGHT – TRULY, HE IS OF TGE LOWEST, MOST WRETCHED STOCK A CREATURE CAN BE: ONE WORTHY OF THE MANTLE OF “ ROYALTY”.
This is, I fear, pure quill truth. When you get down to it martial training is about removing your inhibitions about hurting others and making you more efficient at doing it.
All the airy-fairy stuff about how the True Warrior is a pacifist or how martial arts makes you more moral and less violent is nonsense. Zen or esoteric Buddhist teachings with martial arts? It’s to make you a more detached, clear-minded killer.
Do some traditions teach rules of engagement or ethical reasons not to harm others? Of course. It’s like a dog being trained to hold its own leash on walkies or a gun designed to pull its own trigger. It’s an add-on which the instructor hopes will keep him from having to exercise the part of the student-teacher relationship we don’t like to talk about – the part where the student becomes a super-predator and the teacher has to hunt down and kill his own protege.
Gods I’m cynical today. But many years or experience and reasonable amounts of study in the field bear it out.
ss. Stop that. No more cynicism. Don’t you know that shit is bad for you?
You’re right, but out of context. Most of any fight is decided in the run-up. Who/what are you fighting for/against? What tactics are ‘honourable’ ? All martial cultures work embed this in some form, because there’s no time to reason this out when weapons are drawn.
If this is the master she wanted, she cannot baulk at the lessons. If she didn’t want innocent lives ended on a whim, she should know whether her master might ask it, and whether to respond when it happens.
Martial arts and ethics are a matter of using a tool and philosophy. Teaching both together is a pretty nifty thing, but at the end of the day, a tool can be used by either an Incubus or a Maya.
I will tell you this, as somebody who actually practices with swords weekly; a level-head means every action must have purpose and reason. This is how to actually get consistent. Good. Incubus had a purpose; both him and Maya could have courage in their hearts, something every fencing master and knight five hundred years ago thought was absolutely essential to striking down your foes.
They were right. One could go into battle well armored, knowing all the art of combat like the back of their hand, and with all the other advantages they could have, but if they lack courage, they might as well go ahead and hang themselves.
Once more though; a warrior like Incubus typically has a lot more rogues crawling up his back to get a good stab in. Maya now stands with the Pursuers, hesitantly, but still with allies.
Take your pick.
Those “zen or esoteric Buddhist teachings” associated with a lot of martial arts is usually about teaching you how and when not to fight. That is, if you can accomplish your goals and/or protect yourself without fighting, then you’re obviously a superior and more efficient effectuator than someone who can’t or won’t, since fighting is chaotic, dangerous and really not a great idea if it can be avoided.
… yet an excellent thing to be capable of, so you can choose to pretend to respect the other side’s choice only if it aligns with your own.
If the other side knows this, they, too, will be more willing to pretend that what isn’t, is.
… Has anyone ever compared diplomacy to a sword? How utterly dissimilar the two are?
True story, oddly relevant to this page: a few years ago I “allowed” myself to be robbed.
I was cornered by two men, teenagers really, I’d say 17 or 19. There were no weapons on display except fists. At the time I was in a lot better training and shape than I am now. I was in danger, but not at that moment afraid, which I attribute to all the zen crap. While they were yelling in my face, I had a couple seconds to decide what to do, and I chose to just fork over the cash to get out of a bad situation cleanly.
Unpacking my snap judgements later: I considered fighting, and I believe if I’d suddenly attacked them with extreme force, then on that particular occasion in that particular situation my chances were excellent of surprising and incapacitating both of them without getting hurt myself, and escaping. But it would mean seriously injuring a couple misguided schmuck kids, and I really didn’t want to, even if they were trying to rob me.
If I’d attacked with less than intent to maim, it would be a tussle and I might get hurt. Also, although I’m pretty sure they didn’t, it wasn’t impossible they had knives on their person which case they’d then have a chance to draw them and I’d have been fucked.
So I chose to comply, because it was the option I liked best. The result was exactly the same as if I’d been scared out of my wits and given in out of fear, but I chose to do it rather than thinking it was my only option. My judgements may have been right or wrong, but either way it was a distinct decision on my part.
Ah, but you have forgotten the lowliest being in all of creation: me, without Wealth. But alas that wretched non-entity no longer exists, nor shall it exist again, for I have returned to glory! Not yet the apex of my glory mind you, but I have turned my elevator into a luxury penthouse suite, from which I conduct the business of running my nascent Bank of the Degraded Thief, as molten gold blood flows through my fully vertebrate body!
But fear not, Thorn Knight. I shall forgive the pulverization at your hands, and I shan’t unleash my newly hired Debt Enforcement Agents for your infernal blood. Instead, I will grant you a Tier 4 account at no charge, and a stock in the Bank of the Degraded Thief for free. Consider it mercy from a man who will soon be a lord.
Ask not for whom the sword tolls, it tolls for thee.
And it tolls high. It doesn’t even take change anymore.
Each cut, a verse.. each death- an offering.
Glory to the unmakers of God
How slowly we learn that which wisdom and hindsight find clearly true.
Maya needs to train Allison.
sadly, ‘twould go
against her credo
In the end she still has lost for she has hesitated beyond the point of return. At the end a turn someone will die but those who do nothing will lose every time. Though I have been called evil in the past or at least without morales at the end of the turn doing nothing is probably more evil and despicable since even inaction has consequences.
Hrmm… Reminds me of a phrase I heard once and long remembered:
“Do something, even if it’s wrong.”
KILL SIX BILLION CLASSMATES
The final truth is that you only do what you want. She wanted the rat to not die, but she wanted to not kill Incuboy even more. And look where that got us.
The importance of want is true, but your reasoning is not fully sound. To defend the rat is a goal, with want. To not kill a fellow student is inaction, no want involved. Until Maya learned her lesson, the two things were unrelated. At the rat’s time, she lacked want to kill Incubus. By Allison’s time, she wants to kill Incubus. But at no point shown in the story has she ever wanted /to not kill/ Incubus.
This isn’t even pseudo-philosophy stuff.
Consider the following hypothetical – What if when Incubus swung his blade to kill the rat, Maya had swung her blade at his neck, but at the last second, made the choice to arrest her blade’s movement, allowing Incubus to live and the rat to die? Would this have been any different from not swinging the blade at all?
There is no difference between action and inaction. Those who possess power continually impose their will upon the world, whether they want to or not.
A Maya interested in making gestures such as this either wishes to hang a mere threat over Incubus or is far less concerned with little lives. This resembles neither the indecisive Maya of the past nor the wholehearted cutter she is today. This person has entirely separate wants driving her actions. Wants and intents matter, and the actions they guide aim people long past any random conversion of outcomes. By presenting an entirely different person as an example, you actually quite neatly dismantle your claim that action and inaction are the same.
Consider, then, another example. A man sits in the desert. Weakened from thirst and hunger, he finds himself unable to move. Another man sits across from him – He has not been in the desert for so long, and he is still reasonably well. In the second man’s left hand, he holds an amphora of water. In the second man’s right hand, he holds a loaf of bread.
The second man has no desire to help the first man. As such, the second man sits there, and does nothing, as the first man dies of thirst and is consumed by flies.
Has the second man not acted? Has he not imposed his will upon the world? Would your answer be different if he simply slit the first man’s throat?
Interestingly, jewish tradition asks the very same question you do, and answer it – although you might find the answer unsatisfying.
The first man’s blood is no “redder” than the second, and the second is not obliged to help him while he is, too, at the desert and might not want to spare from his water. This is fine.
The second man’s blood, however, is not “redder” than the first, and he is not allowed to kill the other himself, even to ensure the first man won’t steal his water in the night.
Honestly this sounds like a more convoluted trolly problem, which you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone has a clear solution. Actions and inactions are not the same, even if they have the same results. This is human.
The man in the desert has awareness of the potential action, he sees the other man and knows his inaction may result in the other mans death. In this case inaction is a choice.
Maya was unaware of the potential act. Killing her fellow student did not occur to her. Not killing him was thus not a choice. If the test were repeated, and Maya, having learned her lesson, did nothing, then a choice would have been made.
If I stand at a river crossing, awaiting a boat to ferry me across, and I choose not to hail the first boat, and let it pass, because it’s garish colours offend me, while unbeknownst to me you swim in the waters below, and are crushed by the paddle wheels as it passes, I did not choose to let you die.
If I do the same thing, knowing you are there, a choice was made.
I believe the purpose of Meti’s lesson was to maximize Maya’s awareness of the potential consequences of her inaction.
Meti’s philosophy is designed for people who are approximately as proficient at killing people as Meti- that is to say, people who can cause or prevent almost *any* eventuality by killing, so long as they are aware that there is a choice.
The lesson to Maya is that Maya is never helpless, always has a choice, and should always fully commit herself to any action she truly wills. The lesson is an attempt to burn the *indecisiveness* out of Maya, because she cannot become as powerful as a devotee of Meti’s sword art will become, and remain indecisive on the grounds that she “didn’t know” she could shape the world by killing people.
Who can truly say what these people want? I find it surprising that one seeking to learn the song of the sword would have any regard for a creature as small as a rat. After all, if you get your wish to become a Sword Saint, you are going to spend a great deal of your life mincing people into burger.
It’s quite simple in KSBD. One follows the path of the sword to take some fractional say in how and where violence shapes the universe. What surprise? Who is to stop wielders from being selective in applying their might?
Teachers restrict.
This is axiomatic
Fighting is not about blind action, true.
It is also not about hesitant inaction
Training, however, is about properly and fully thinking before the actions, so that when one is truly Fighting there is no hesitation due to thinking.
See, I would have said the one who lost is the rat.
Incuboy possessed the mad, wide-eyed gaze of those willing to attain Royalty at any cost from an early age, I see.
As well as one who is totally intellectually incurious. Never once did he question why the rat needed to die, or nor why he should shave his head with a rusty sword, simply because some old woman told him to. He has taken for granted the idea that if he does what she says, he will become a great swordsman in the end.
And lo, Incubus is described as the Worst Swordsman. This is not without reason.
Intra was also a pretty shite swordsman, but he was so shite he ended up bein kickass at it, so you never know
The road to Samura is a hard one, and the service of guides does not come cheap.
Still. A few find their way there, from time to time.
Maya speaks from hindsight, and perhaps from arrogance. Perhaps Meti knew that her first student had already learned much of what her second student required.
For all we may prefer Meti to Incubus, Incubus seems the better student, a fellow slave to the sword. That Maya hesitated so long to cut her hair, that Incubus walked without care in the mud soaked in the death of thousands… perhaps Meti’s only true student is not the one Maya believes it is.
Incubus was first in learning what Meti taught them, but Maya was first (and only, it seems) in learning what Meti wanted them to learn. Do not forget how all of Meti’s teachings went to the goal of showing how more honorable the noodle vendor was from the sword saint, or even the demiurge.
Meh. If Meti wanted them to learn something, she should have taught them that, not expect them to figure it out for themselves. Why be a teacher otherwise?
Who said she’s a teacher?, what I see is a mere bum guiding two fools to the logical end conclusion to their ambitions, if they are to learn something on the way its on their own
She tried many times to teach them how dangerous and unadvisable was the use of the sword when making them shave their heads with a rusty blade. And look how did it go for them.
This lesson lies heavy on my soul. Also the art here is beautiful. Such progress since your days of storytelling in the forum.
The teacher masters the craft of destroying and rebuilding his students using lies that are more true than facts. The road gets bumpier from here. But fear not. You do not travel alone.
Ah, it is YS-Het and the Centurion come again. I predict that their inevitable confrontation will go much as it did before, with Maya scarred for life and Incubus whimpering in the dirt like a dog, with the only words he ever says to her being ‘kill me’.
Once, before I knew much of the world, I happened upon an old woman offering sword lessons to anyone who would buy her a bowl of soup. Intrigued and wishing to learn to defend myself, I accepted. After our meal she gave me a wooden practice sword and took a stance, unarmed. She told me to strike her in such a way that I should kill her were it a real blade. I tried to do so, and, with a dazzling display of martial arts prowess, she disarmed me. Again I tried, to the same result. The third time, however, it was as if my soul was lit aflame with power, and I struck true. “Consider this exercise,” The woman told me. “I, a master of Pilgrim Fist, was unable to stop the sword of even an inexperienced swordsman such as yourself when you took that blade into your heart. Return here tomorrow for your next lesson.”
As I discovered later that day, the hateful crone used the duel as a distraction to steal my coinpurse, which I normally keep well guarded against pickpockets. Try as I might, I never found her again. I suspect that she was a master of no style but that which allowed her to swindle gold from unwary boys.
Once I had in my wanderings come upon a long-abandoned battlefield of the Gods. Their bones had been long picked of their flesh, their polearms rusted thrice over, and once the moon had risen their ghosts wailed in its pale light.
I swear, I must have taken the wrong turn…
In a less cynical cosmos, auntie maya could have been a loved and glorious heroine.
But on this divine battlefield, life is cheaper than the steel used to make the weapons that determine its end
He who lives by the blade is an imbicile who knows no useful profession.
Or, alternatively, someone defending against imbeciles.
Imbeciles tend not to be susceptible to reasoned discourse.
He who utilizes the blade to defend against imbeciles should seek not to live by his weapon. If he does, he is an imbecile who knows no useful profession.
Swords are not defensive weapons. I believe that you are thinking of polearms or shields.
Of course, smart warriors carry multiple weapons. Meti is definitely NOT a smart warrior in this regard.
Hrmm… in the hands of an adept warrior even the most innocuous item can be a weapon. Say, a hat or belt, bracelets, sandals, a cloak, or even a hair pin. Or half of a rat.
A weapon that kills without a moments hesitation, a hunters rifle for instance, is declared a wondrous thing by some, a dangerous thing by others. A man who does the same is either a monster or a hero. What exactly is the difference between the two? A weapon has no intent, it doesn’t know what it is doing. The rifle could shoot a bird, or a stone, or a man, or a river, and it wouldn’t notice. Yet a man who has truly hardened his heart, he wouldn’t notice either.
What is the difference truly?
~ The singing god, to Yisun
A rifle knows when it strikes the heart. Ask one.
Meti might have a fondness for rats, but that fondness did not inhibit her from offering one to be destroyed as a lesson and/or warning for her students. She did not want for it to live more than for it to be used so.
I wonder what else Meti might have offered to be destroyed as a lesson, even though she had some fondness for it, or them, as the case may be?
Incubus, for a start.
Herself, in the end.
Hair.
Aiat! Aiat! Aiat! The Sword Law is upheld!
The only right is existence, the only wrong is nonexistence. Aiat. The only meaningful relationship is the attempt to destroy. Aiat. What is at war is healthy, what is at peace is sick. Aiat.
I feel the poison of sword law worming it’s way through my soul. Maya showed mercy indeed in sparing an aspiring student. At times like these I am want to despair and shrink from my calling. Then I step back and ponder on the height that must needs balance these depths.
I am more than I was before
from rotten pit to blissful shore
the sure way calls: Be damned no more
Maya seems awfully arrogant in her thinking. Back then and now. She’s never gotten over the fact he killed the mouse before her.