The lotus-woman had no known name, and when Sano asked if she had one, all she got in response was a loathing-filled silence and a generous glob of spit on the floor. She was simply known to Sano and everyone else as Swordmaster.
She was a gnarled and brittle woman, nary seen without a pipe clutched in one of her face-roots, who routinely abused and disciplined her body with a rigorous schedule. She got up at the same grueling time every day, despite the wanton and unpredictable cycle of the suns, to meditate in the courtyard. She could balance headfirst on her stave for an unbroken amount of hours, no matter the weather. When evening broke, she took two bucketfuls of steaming rice noodles from her kitchen and carried them six and a half miles west to feed the local vagrants, before retiring to gorge herself on the grain alcohol she received in exchange.
Sano did not accompany her for most of these trips at first; in fact the lotus-woman seemed eager to spend as little time with her as possible. Despite her harsh statements to Sano at the door, she indeed made Sano take up her offer on doing housework. Sano spent her first weeks at Swordmaster's hut scrubbing tile and grout, and brushing away cobwebs, and getting fresh blood from the well to boil into stews. Doing this, she quickly became accustomed to the hut's layout.
"Master, when will you teach me how to use a sword?" Sano once asked, hunched over a stubborn stain with a dry-bristle brush.
"Do you see a sword in my hand, girl?" replied Swordmaster, who was lounging on her kitchen chair and chewing her pipe.
"N-no."
"Then how could I teach you to use one? Fool girl. Learn some damn patience." Swordmaster then went to empty her pipe, and that was that.
All in all, Sano spent a season becoming acquainted with the master's house, learning nothing of the sword at all.
—
Sano saw another demon around the hut, only occasionally - a tall and lanky figure with a hairless, doglike face. Sano hid the first time she saw him, but he did not menace her or do anything threatening - he had a timid demeanor despite his size, exacerbated by a hunched-over posture that shrank his presence. He dressed in humble rags and shuffled through the house with the demeanor of a well-trodden hound.
"That is Beaten Dog," Swordmaster said when Sano asked who he was, "my useless disciple. Do not bother speaking to him, for he cannot reply."
Indeed, Beaten Dog seemed unable to speak; he merely made gestures whenever Sano tried to strike up conversation. However, he gave her good directions when she was lost and always poured her an extra bowl of stew at night (Swordmaster did not eat, and did not bother making anything for Sano).
Swordmaster did not like to acknowledge Beaten Dog's existence; when she did it was to loudly scold him, or mutter curses to his name under her breath, or rap his forehead or knuckles with the head of her stave for what she deemed insolent behavior. He was not allowed to eat at the table and slept outside. Nevertheless, he shadowed the house despite his unwanted presence. During evenings after Swordmaster drank herself into unconsciousness, he swept up the gourd-bottles left at her feet, and he stoked the fires in the kitchen that kept the constantly-bubbling cauldron of noodles hot.
Sano spent much of her time with Beaten Dog when the master's gaze was off them, for his presence was much more welcoming than the master's, and he let her clamber up on his shoulders to reach the top of tall shelves. He did not seem to mind when Sano pestered him with questions, and was receptive to her feedback on dialing back the spice in her broth for evening meals (though it was Swordmaster's recipe, it was he who cooked).
He carried a sword by his side but it remained in its scabbard at nearly all times; the one time Sano was able to get a good look, she found it was the dullest blade she had ever seen, a weapon so unkempt and unpolished that it made Sano question how its owner ever could have been trained by a swordsman at all. Beaten Dog, for his part, seemed to prefer the utility of a broom.
—
After many weeks, Sano was finally allowed to accompany Swordmaster on her daily trip to the vagrants' alley. Sano was tasked with carrying that week's batch of rice noodles. The contraption used to carry the buckets was immensely heavy and Sano struggled not to be crushed under its weight.
"Keep up, girl," Swordmaster intoned several feet in front of her as she walked the sands effortlessly, "the sun won't be up forever."
"Yes, Swordmaster," Sano huffed through gritted teeth.
They walked together through dunes, down through the sand valleys, until they reached an empty square of old bricks and dust. Old cloth banners draped from the few remaining buildings were scavenged for crude material to create tents.
Up and down the walls, sun-scorched demons sat sleeping, playing gambling games such as dice or cards, and murmuring amongst themselves. Most were covered in some manner of dust or filth - it seemed as though they had not moved from their spots for a long, long time.
"Why have you taken me with you this time, Master?"
"To show you the putrid excess of war."
"War? What war?" Sano asked.
Swordmaster spat on the ground. "Ignorant girl."
She lifted the bucket-holder from Sano's shoulders without much effort and placed it on the ground in front of the vagrants' tents. Sano watched them swarm towards the offered food like black eels - shoving each other out of the way without much force in their brittle bodies, many of which had missing limbs, marred faces, destroyed extremities.
"Do you know what this place is?" said Swordmaster, whose questions did not come off as questions more than statements.
"No, master."
"This was the Square of Providence. It used to be a place of respite and culture along the Road. All sorts of travelers and merchants gathered here to share things. Ideas, words, contraptions." Swordmaster gestured at the wide plane of dirt and dust before them. "Now it provides nothing. The merchants that governed this land had their throats slit long ago. The vagrants who fill it now sit in their own filth and piss on the floor, waiting for annihilation to arrive."
She walked to the end of the line of tents, where a three-armed demon sat splayed on a tarp. Long and lanky, its dusty robes splayed open to expose a single breast to the sun. The other was severed, replaced by a jagged line of scar tissue. It tilted its masked head up as she approached.
"Hail, Auntie," it whispered with a raspy, slithering voice. It reached its hands out for the bucket Swordmaster had balanced on her hip.
Swordmaster stopped its motions with a halting gesture. "Payment."
"Auntie is a harsh dealbroker," bemoaned the demon, reaching into its cloak to rummage for something. It pulled out a large gourd from which it poured a substantial amount of black liquor into Swordmaster's expectant cup.
"Promise you won't become as stingy as Auntie, little one," it said, addressing Sano, who was hiding slightly behind Swordmaster's legs. "Hold some kindness in your heart for old, useless beggars."
Sano was unsure how to respond; Swordmaster dumped the bowl of noodles at the demon's feet.
"Tell the girl of the war."
"The war?" The beggar repeated amusedly, a smile dancing on its jagged jaw. "Were you not taught of the war, little one? Did you grow up under a rock?"
"Worse," said Swordmaster. "She grew up with family." Sano bristled at her glowering tone, but neither Swordmaster nor the beggar took any notice.
"Mmm..." With no utensils, the demon took the bowl off the ground and slurped down a massive mouthful of broth. It licked its chops with a long, black tongue and spoke:
"Well, once upon a time there was nothing, and then a long long time after that there were demons, just like you or me... and the archangels came down from heaven and spoke that we had no place in their ordered world of perfection. Their garden was beautiful and it was closed to us...
"Our Fallen Mother protested our treatment and was cast out. Her heavenly wings were plucked from Her back and She fell into Purgatory with us, where we nursed Her back to health. She gathered a great army of demons... 'Witness the destruction of the universe which you so coveted', She said. And She unleashed Hell upon them. And Heaven made angels solely to kill us and sent them down to do battle, which we have done for years and years.
"That is the Primordial War. It has always been fought. And always will. Until the angels kill all of us or all the universe has been eaten, I suppose."
With the end of its tale, the demon finished off the last of its noodles and slunk off to its tent.
Swordmaster stood by Sano as she pondered, hands folded behind her back. It seemed she was waiting for a reaction.
"I don't understand," Sano said finally. "What does any of that have to do with me?"
"With you? Nothing." Swordmaster's face curled into a sneer. "War is not concerned with you. War is not concerned with any of us. It does not distinguish by time, age, or innocence. It is an abyss. It has swallowed your family as it has swallowed the lives and homes of these wretches. And without a second thought it will swallow you."
Sano was silent, a stone pit having formed in her stomach.
"The only thing that will keep you from obliteration is your sword," said Swordmaster. "This is why I train. If you want to live without fear and not be trodden upon like an insect, you shall train too."
She turned in the direction of the hut and began to walk. Sano quickly skittered after her.
—
Sano laid awake that night, curled under the thin blanket of her cot. She thought of her family, their bodies turned to ash, their names which only she carried in her head. How easily she could have been in the house that day crushed with them. How easily she still could be crushed, their names lost forever, no one left to remember them.
A terrible, churning feeling made its home in her gut, and Sano swore to herself that she would learn to take up the sword no matter what.
—
"Ready your stance."
The training sword that Sano had received was blunted and barely had any heft, yet she still had a difficult time holding it. Her palms refused to stop sweating.
Balancing atop her stave, Swordmaster towered over Sano with her arms crossed. She had forced Sano to go on a run and do a grueling set of physical drills before even giving her the facsimile of a weapon to swing.
"There are swordsmen who will profess ancient teachings from hundreds of thousands ago," Swordmaster began. "Warrior-poets who swear up and down that the battleground is a canvas and their storied techniques the brush. Artisan knights who claim that violence itself is an artform and hold it to the highest reverence."
She took a long puff of her pipe.
"I am no warrior-poet. I hold no songs in my heart. What I understand about violence is this: it is the applied motion of kinetic energy. Nothing more, nothing less."
She gestured to the effigy.
"Swing."
Sano's first swing was clumsy, her stance lopsided. It hit the effigy's shoulder and bounced off without making a dent, the force of the swing nearly toppling Sano instead. The sword clattered to the ground.
"Observe how your intent was unsure, and thus was your swing," said Swordmaster. "Observe how your cowardly swipe directed the energy nowhere and it ricocheted back to you.
"Observe how the sword is a primitive and crude weapon. Brutes and fools enter every situation sword-point first when ego swells their heads, disregarding that a sword has no eyes with which to see, no blood or limbs to lose. A sword is a piece of lumpen metal. In the case that your enemy should strike you down before you notice, the sword will do nothing to protect you."
From atop her stave, Swordmaster cracked her knuckles.
"What a sword is useful for is for being a vessel."
In a blur, she struck the effigy with such vibrating force that it made the air crackle, Sano's eyes watering with the speed at which the blade moved.
There were now two halves to the training dummy, separated by a perfect vertical cut.
Sano gaped. She hadn't even seen the sword emerge from its sheath.
"A subpar weapon," Swordmaster muttered, lighting her pipe. "One would be better off training in polearms."
"Teach me how to do that," Sano said without thinking.
Swordmaster paused, then snorted.
"My technique is as simple and old as demonkind itself. It is the ultimate answer to any question, it will carry you through any foe." She exhaled smoke. "Once you learn, it is as easy as breathing."
Sano asked, starstruck, "What is it?"
"Hate," replied Swordmaster.
She gestured for Sano to swing again. Sano tried to mark her stance the way Swordmaster had instructed, struggling to put her question and her master's answer together in a way that made sense.
"Violence is motion," Swordmaster said. "Kinetic energy which ripples out from us to the targets of our savagery. If I were to strike you, you would receive the force from my blow. But over days, over centuries, greater forces mold us, pull us under their current. It is this force that generates hatred."
She fixed Sano with an eyeless, barbed gaze. "Think of your home and the ashes it became. Your family's faces. Did you have a favored sibling? Was there a place for you, unmarred by worry, where you slept easy and settled in the sun?"
Sano's face began to burn hot.
"With each blow the world doles unto us, the body remembers. It is this that separates us from the brute-fools, theoretical scholars, and distant kings."
The next strike from Sano rang true, though it was still clumsy with inexperience. Despite her weapon's blunt nature, she managed to shear the hand off the well-abused effigy, scattering fragments of straw to the air. This was her first true act of violence. The feeling was like a bird fluttering in her chest; she could not help but follow the arc of it with something like awe.
"Observe how violence becomes a simple matter of physics," said Swordmaster. "Let hatred burn in your heart, and you will not have to think at all to kill."
—
By the time Sano trudged back to the hut with Swordmaster well ahead, every muscle in her body burned with exertion, and her eyelids were too heavy to keep open. For all her acridity, it could not be said that Swordmaster's training was not thorough and effective. Sano was introduced to more forms that day than most studied acolytes would learn within a month.
Sano collapsed next to her cot without even climbing in, curling up face first on the floor. After a time, a familiar presence shuffled up behind her and pulled a blanket over her form.
"Beaten Dog," she mumbled blearily against the floorboards, "I learned to wield a sword."
There was predictably no response, but an affectionate huff could be heard through the silence.
"I'll become strong... strong enough to go on the road without being eaten by buzzards." Sano took a moment to stretch. "And then I'll find the one who killed my family and I'm going to kill them."
Beaten Dog made a snuffling noise, his tail softly thumping against the floor.
"I'll visit you after, okay?" she yawned. "I'll remember the way back. So just wait."
And then everything was dark, and Sano was asleep.